


Unsettled

by AxeMeAboutAxinomancy



Series: The Utmost Edge of Hazard [1]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - Fusion, But I will try to make it worth it, Daemons, It's not all cute animals, M/M, Podfic Available, Seriously there is some dark and some possibly triggering stuff, Some readers have said you don't have to have read HDM to follow this, This is a bit less fluffy than I usually do, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-02
Updated: 2013-12-06
Packaged: 2018-01-03 05:36:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 33,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1066379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AxeMeAboutAxinomancy/pseuds/AxeMeAboutAxinomancy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's dæmon hadn't settled. Once John realised that, so much made sense. Though so much else didn't, because it practically wasn't <i>possible.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Brace Yourself

**Author's Note:**

> **PLEASE take note that this story contains reference to some dark, possibly triggering, non-consensual sexual content** that happened in the story's past. It does not happen "on screen" or in detail, which is why I chose not to use Archive warnings. But my tags were not clear enough to warn off some readers who were distressed, for which I'm very sorry. **Sensitive readers may wish to skip this story.**
> 
> My endless gratitude to DestinationToast and ThatsNumberwang for beta help. ♥

_January 29_  
 _Russell Square_  
 _Lunchtime_

In the moments before a familiar voice called out to him in the park, John Watson felt sure of one thing: that he knew the end of his own story. Not intimately, not in detail, but all the same he could feel it stretching out before him, a dull and brittle path that couldn't lead very far, or to anywhere worth the bother of going. All of his adventures were behind him. Vivid things, fearful things, passionate things, all these had been leached out of his life after he was shot. All of these things had _bled_ out of him, leaving him dull and dishwater grey and practically invisible.

So when he heard "John!" he did not think it meant him, and even "John Watson!" almost failed to land on him. But his dæmon heard, and when she stopped, he stopped too.

He did not recognise the chubby man in the suit and glasses who came puffing up to him, but his corgi dæmon seemed familiar. She waddled right up to Ferendala and they sniffed each other's noses with casual familiarity. The corgi wagged her tail so hard that her paws were constantly in motion. Feren swished her tail twice, friendly but not effusive.

"It's Mike!" said the man, "Mike Stamford? And Kirianath," indicating his dæmon. "We were at Bart's together…?"

The puzzle piece slid into place, and the stranger transformed in front of John's eyes into something - some _one_ \- he understood. Mike. Mike Stamford, who got so heroically drunk that time on New Year's Eve that he fell down the stairs. Mike Stamford, who had helped John study and had once given him a sofa to sleep on, no questions asked, after John had been thrown out by his girlfriend.

"Oh - Mike! Yes - sorry, I didn't - didn't recognise you."

"Well, I got fat," said Mike, ruefully.

"Oh, er…"

He was supposed to deny it, John knew that, but he couldn't quite connect to it in time to make the social nicety happen. Mike was a person with a name and a shared history, but John hadn't been expecting to talk to anyone beyond, perhaps, the bare minimum to a shop clerk or a waitress. John himself was not the same person as when last they spoke.

Mike didn't appear to be offended, though. Not even when John snapped at him for his friendly efforts. And that, he remembered now, was how Mike had always been, almost unflappable. It had made him a good study partner, and it had been the reason Mike had been the one John thought to call on in a time of need.

But it was a whole lifetime ago now. That was a whole John Watson ago.

"I might not have recognised you either if it weren't for your dæmon," said Mike. "She's hard to miss."

This was a given. Ferendala was an Irish wolfhound, one of the biggest dogs in the natural world. She was a bit of a liability on the Tube, but then John with his cane was a liability on stairs.

Mike treated him to a coffee from the nearby shop, and they sat on a bench to drink. Ferendala sat on the ground beside the bench. John could see his own tension and weariness in her body language, and of course Mike and his dæmon could see it too. Kirianath sat on the other side of Mike, near his feet, quietly giving the other dæmon plenty of space.

"Can't afford to live in London," John heard himself saying dully. "Not on an Army pension."

"Couldn't Harry help?"

He snorted. "Yeah, like that's going to happen." He and Harry were not speaking to each other. She blamed him for taking Clara's side, accused him of trying to break them up so he could "have a go at my wife" as she'd shrieked at him over the phone, and he'd hung up on her mid-rant. And it wouldn't have mattered if the pair of them were as thick as thieves, he wouldn't have taken her money.

"You could find a flat share," Mike said, and John snorted.

"Who'd want me for a flatmate?" He couldn't even imagine it. Dealing with another person in close orbit. Repelling intrusions - like this one, calling to him across a park. But all the time, every day. He couldn't ever see it working.

Mike laughed, and his dæmon popped up on her hind legs to rest her front paws on the bench beside him. She grinned at them both, tongue lolling.

"What?"

"You're the second person to say that to us today," said Kirianath.

***

John almost didn't go with Mike to Bart's. He almost told Mike that he had to get on now and great to see him and etc., but just as he opened his mouth Feren leaned her head into his hand. Her warmth and her thoughts flowed into him. They did want to stay in London. But they really could not afford it. They could not even afford the wretched little bedsit they had now, and they scarcely both fit in it. Something had to change.

And it could do little harm, surely, to go and have a look at Bart's again, he hadn't been there since the other side of his other lifetime. He could at least meet the man.

"You're being very mysterious about him," he said to Mike as they walked. Mike hadn't even mentioned a name. The corgi dæmon paraded beside him, clearly pleased that John had come along. For every two steps of Ferendala's, Kirianath had to take five or six.

"It's sort of appropriate really," Mike said. "You'll see. Trust me."

And Feren bumped John's hand again with her nose, she was walking just a little taller too and he realised she was right, he was just a little bit interested now, just a little curious. Mike had never exactly been a smooth salesman type. Whatever he was hinting at did exist. Was interesting. Whatever it was.

He'd said to his therapist, "nothing happens to me." While this wasn't precisely true, he was never going to be able to say this again. But he didn't know it at the time.

***

What happened to him was Sherlock Holmes.

But he didn't get the name till the end of that first encounter, and John's mind was already spinning, his reality knocked a little off kilter by the sudden appearance of this other acquaintance of Mike Stamford's who happened to be looking for a flatmate.

They paused at the doors to a lab. Mike just said, "Brace yourself," and they went in.

John noticed first that the lab had been greatly upgraded since the days when he and Mike were here as students, and he said something to that effect as they walked in. At the far end of the worktop sat a dark haired man doing some chemistry procedure, and his cat dæmon was sitting beside him. Both pairs of eyes flicked up briefly, in unison, before returning to gaze intently into a petri dish.

Before any introductions could be made, the man spoke up abruptly. He wanted Mike's phone to send a text. His voice, a smooth deep drawl, moved through the room like an arrogant burglar, turning all the lights on and smearing its fingerprints all over the glassware.

Ferendala stood up very straight beside John. He was short for a human, she was tall for a dæmon; her head could eclipse his heart. He could feel her attention engaged, as though her pale fur were standing up on end.

Mike could not oblige him with a phone. John wondered ever afterwards if he'd been telling the truth about that, or had expected John to offer his. Which he did. At this, the man and his dæmon looked at John and Ferendala again, and John felt an intense spotlight of attention that went all the way through to the back of his head.

"Thank you," the man said, and approached John to take it. Mike introduced John to him, but instead of doing the expected thing by filling in that blank in return, the man took John's phone, started texting on it, and asked with frightening casualness,

"Zoroastria or Sawad?"

Again the voice took over the room, and John's thoughts also, because Mike made it clear with a shake of his head that _he_ hadn't told, and who else could have?

John's dæmon lifted her head and stared straight into the pale blue eyes of the tawny cat. It was a warning, but she need not have given it, John was entirely capable of making it clear when someone was pushing over the line.

But the man didn't care about lines, he cared about details. He talked about playing violin, he talked about not talking for days, though this seemed fairly unlikely to John, given how much talking he was suddenly doing now. And yet every word was incisive, his tongue was as subtle as a knife, with a perfectly sharpened blade that cut but did not hurt.

Did not hurt John, anyway. He saw it hurt the pathologist with the raven dæmon on her shoulder who came to bring the man a coffee.

"How do you know about Zoroastria?"

And at last the man turned and just… _summed John up_ as though he were an item on a menu illustrated with helpful photographs. His tan line, his haircut, his limp, his dæmon's stance at a stranger's approach.

It was terrifying, in one way. It trickled down over John like freezing rain, the thought that he could be taken in at a glance like that, devoid of secrets.

And in another way, it was liberating. It could be liberating to be without secrets to keep. An empty safe, standing open. Nothing left to steal.

And he supposed the violin was okay.

And then right at the end of this baffling encounter, he got the name and address of the rest of his life.

"The name's Sherlock Holmes. The address is 221B Baker Street," he said in that weapon of a voice, and the cat on his shoulder winked at John before they turned away.

After the door swung shut, Ferendala wagged her long, feathery tail, once. Just once, to make a point.

John looked at Mike, feeling as though he'd just been narrowly missed by a high speed bullet train.

"Yeah," said Mike, both fond and apologetic at the same time in that way that he'd always had, even at the bottom of a flight of stairs. "He's always like that."

Back at the dreary little bedsit again that evening, John thought to check the sent texts on his phone.

**If brother's dæmon cannot fly,**  
 **arrest brother. SH**

John sat down with his laptop and did a bit of googling. 'The Art of Deductive Science.'

Was this guy for real?

Feren leaned against his leg, and he stopped what he was doing to turn his full attention to her. They leaned their foreheads together, an abbreviated hug.

"You're interested in this," she said.

"Yes, of course. You are too."

"He's interesting," said the dæmon.

"His dæmon is interesting too," said John, and thought about it for a moment, trying to ignore the overwhelmingly Sherlock Holmes portion of his memory and focus on the cat instead. "Something… unusual about it. Her." Now why would he have said 'it'? Almost all men had female dæmons. There was a small percentage who didn't. Not that there was anything wrong with that.

Funny that Holmes hadn't introduced her when he introduced himself, though.

But rather than answer this, his wolfhound dæmon said, "You liked the way he knew everything without your having to tell him. You hate talking about yourself," and he had to laugh, because of course she was right.

That night, again, dreams of the war. The war, everpresent and neverending, smearing his dreamscape with loud noises and blood. His waking was as miserable as it always was.

Something _had_ happened to him once, over there; he'd been shot, then suffered a bad infection recovering. Thanks to that he'd had to leave the war zone of Zoroastria and come back to London. The life he had chosen, hellish though it may have been, and incomprehensible as a choice to Harry or his mother, was forever closed to him now.

When he woke, he gasped for breath, and Ferendala was there with him as she always was in waking life, never further away than he could see her. He hugged her, shaking, eyes squeezed tightly shut, his face pressed into her soft fur. Her slow and steady heartbeat brought him back.

In dreams John was alone. In dreams, he didn't even have a dæmon. He had to carry his spirit all by himself.

"Let's get up now," she said, and he knew it wasn't just to divert him, she was excited about today, that today would bring change, and that they would see Sherlock Holmes and his dæmon again. As he got up and limped across the room to get his cane (there was nowhere right next the bed to keep it, another little detail that made the bedsit feel so very unwelcoming) she moved as close as a shadow with him, and her tail gave a lazy swish now and then.

It was a long way from there to Baker Street. But John was stubborn, and taxis weren't cheap. Ferendala might not be a real dog, but she had settled in a dog form for a reason. It suited her to be outside, in motion, seeing and smelling and hearing new things all the time. She always measured her pace to John's, though he could see how much she longed to run. He understood it completely, it was his own wish. But the doctors and his therapist and Sherlock Holmes could all call it 'psychosomatic' as much as they liked - his leg _did not work_ as it should, not anymore, and running was in his past. Their past.

He watched her tail droop a little and felt obscurely guilty. She was him, but she was also herself, and he didn't like to hurt her or see her sad, even if he didn't care about his own hurt or sadness. At least he knew that wasn't logical, but there still wasn't anything he could reasonably do about it.

He'd known how far it was in theory, but knowing the route and limping along it every step of the way were not the same thing. He hated his cane, his good leg hated his bad leg, his feet hated everything.

He had to stop and rest more than once. He would have loved a coffee, but it was impossible to drink it while walking with a cane.

At last, before him, lay his destination. There was a red awning beside it for a sandwich bar, and the warm smells of toast and bacon wafted to his nose and made his mouth water.

He had just rapped the knocker against the door when he heard the voice behind him.

"Hello."

John turned. A cab was pulling away, and there _he_ was again, in his dramatic coat. The cat dæmon clung adroitly to his right shoulder, disdaining to walk on the pavement.

"Mr Holmes," said John, struggling for some kind of formal dignity.

"Sherlock, please."

They shook hands. And then the cat on Sherlock's shoulder said, "And I am Vyarosse."

This was a little shocking. It wasn't as though other people's dæmons never spoke to people, Mike's dæmon had spoken to John once yesterday, but they did not _introduce themselves_ , and definitely not in a tone which implied that they should have been introduced first.

But John recovered himself and said, "Nice to meet you. This is Ferendala," with his hand on Feren's back, and she wagged her tail once, politely, but her ears were perked forward a bit and her eyes were bright.

"Well, this is a prime spot," John said, glancing around the street. It really was. It was too good, really, he had no idea how they were to afford it even with two. "It must be expensive."

"Well, Mrs Hudson, the landlady, gave me a special deal. She owes me a favour. A few years back her husband got himself sentenced to death in Tegesta. I was able to help out."

"You - stopped her husband being executed?"

"Oh no," said Vyarosse. "We ensured it."

The door opened, and John exchanged a glance with Ferendala.

An older lady came gushing out, "Sherlock," fondly hugging Sherlock with one arm. Her dæmon was a little brown owl which perched on her shoulder. John could see that her dress had reinforcements on both shoulders for just such a use.

"Mrs Hudson, Waldzell, this is Dr John Watson and Ferendala."

The flat was at the top of a steep flight of stairs. John struggled to navigate them quickly enough to avoid anyone commenting on it. Maybe something in his expression forbade sympathy, but whatever the reason, the others never mentioned it.

The flat itself - well. A book-bearing bomb appeared to have gone off in it, every surface had both papers and dust, and the kitchen… John remembered seeing Sherlock in the lab at Bart's and had a sinking feeling about the kitchen.

And yet, for all that, for all there was a human skull on the mantel and some kind of an animal one on the wall, the place felt… Good. And it wasn't that even just the sitting room here was so much larger than the whole bedsit. It just felt as though this flat were somehow glad to see him.

No one was ever glad to see him. Feren's tail wandered lazily back and forth.

Then the landlady thoroughly embarrassed him with her not so delicate questions and assurances about the number of bedrooms needed. John turned scarlet and became defensive as her owl dæmon stared at him, and tried not to think at all about the fact that his bedroom was going to be up yet another flight of stairs.

Because there was never any question really, once he got there. He was going to stay. That was clear when Ferendala went to sit in front of the (currently cold) fireplace, and Vyarosse jumped down from Sherlock's shoulder to sit beside her.

"Oh Sherlock, the mess you've made," tsked Mrs Hudson, braving the kitchen.

John sat down in the nearest chair and felt a bit as though his compass were finding true north for the first time.

He did not get a chance to bask in that feeling. But it didn't matter, because it was still there every time he sat down in his chair.

And then, right then, their first case beckoned. Detective Inspector Lestrade and his osprey dæmon came personally to ask for Sherlock Holmes, and Sherlock went away but came back almost at once to ask John to join him. Vyarosse's pupils were dilated with predatory excitement and his tail-tip was twitching, and Sherlock only lacked a tail of his own.

Ferendala jumped up from the rug, John shoved up out of the chair and reached for his cane, and the game was on.


	2. What's Wrong With That?

John blogged about the case later. 'Crisis in Crimson', he called it. Had a nice sort of ring to it, he thought.

It was the first time in years that he felt he had anything at all to write, to say, that even he would want to hear or read, let alone anyone else. He actually felt interested and excited as he wrote it all down, and more than once, he had to go back to adjust his language, to sound less effusive, less excited, less… fanboy.

He had to take out the part where he described what it was like when Sherlock started deducing. The part in the cab, and the part at the crime scene, with the lady all in red. What it felt like to John when he broke it all down, when he explained all the little things that he saw and the way he saw them connecting. John had never known a human mind could work this way. Genius was a thing which seemed walled off from ordinary minds, ordinary perceptions. There was no accessing the process if one couldn't even understand the results. But Sherlock explained the process. It didn't mean it could be duplicated, but it could be followed.

It could be appreciated, admired. It deserved to be. But Sherlock made it clear that that wasn't what people usually did. And John quickly saw this for himself. Some people, like Mrs Hudson, like Angelo, who had directly benefited from his gifts, did appreciate Sherlock as John thought they should. But the police, though they benefited too, also lost face every time. Just their needing to ask for him lost them face. John could understand it, but at least Lestrade appreciated the help he got. His subordinates' venom seemed all out of proportion. Donovan acted as though she'd like to kill Sherlock herself, or see him killed. What kind of way was that for the police to behave?

It got worse, though. The "drugs bust" was an unpleasant surprise of the worst sort - and another thing he left out of the account of the case in his blog. Sherlock didn't say it in so many words, but the look on his face hinted at a lot of things. Clearly, this sort of past wasn't among the worst sort of things that flatmates should know about each other. John's surprise was such that Feren sat down hard on her rump with a tiny whine.

One thing he couldn't even write down was the fact that this fascinating person, this first thing to shine in John's eyes through the gloom of what his life had become, would gladly risk himself, his life, to prove his cleverness. Which needed no proof but itself, and it proved itself every day, but it just wasn't enough without danger.

And as was pointed out to him by a chilly, mysteriously threatening stranger who turned out to be Sherlock's brother, that was what Sherlock and John had in common. Whatever life consisted of, it just wasn't enough without danger. If their hearts weren't pounding, they may as well not even beat.

John just felt slightly nettled that he hadn't guessed Mycroft to be a family member. A _Holmes_. He ought to have at least glimpsed that truth. In hindsight it did seem so obvious. But Sherlock seemed like a singular creature, not like a normal person with a normal family. (He wasn't, and they weren't, but that was not quite the point.)

While he sat at his laptop, typing and deleting, typing and deleting, Feren sat close beside him and he could feel joy radiating from her in waves. The cane was nowhere in sight. He didn't need it anymore.

John would feel embarrassed that it had been psychosomatic after all, but it was not a result he wanted to argue with. He had _run_. He _could_ run. He'd jumped up from the table at Angelo's, left his cane sitting there, and run after Sherlock. Whenever he wanted, John could just walk, run, go up and down stairs. Christ, he could dance if he wanted to. If he could dance at all. Which he couldn't. But if he wanted to, he could learn.

Sherlock did that.

Sherlock was so worth following that John found himself not only willing but _able_ to follow.

Sherlock would have to be a far bigger bastard than he was to make even the slightest dent in John's contentment, no matter how John made it look when people inevitably offended him by assuming they must be a romantic partnership. That started happening on the first day, and though John had assumed at first that it was just Angelo who saw it, it wasn't. And it wasn't just Mrs Hudson either, who was clearly hoping to compete with Mrs Turner and her "married ones."

Ferendala thought it was amusing. He wasn't clear whether she was amused at people's assumptions, or at his anxiety, but he wasn't inclined to discuss it either way.

Sherlock himself… he had said "married to his work." John rather suspected he might be asexual. He showed no interest of any sort in any sort of person that John could see, except for John himself. Every day, everywhere he went, others certainly showed their interest in him. The only time he appeared to be aware of it at all was when he chose to take advantage of it.

John saw him turn on the charm, and saw how charming it looked, and he also saw how it instantly fell off Sherlock's face like a discarded mask when he got what he wanted. It looked less charming once you'd seen it a few times. So he started watching the affected people instead. And he found himself pitying them.

It didn't always work, anyway. Not everyone responded to that sudden faceful of fake charm, no matter how handsome and imposing he naturally was. Sometimes John was the right one to be charming and persuasive on a smaller, more comprehensible scale - which didn't shut off like a tripped circuit when he had got what he wanted.

It was probably a kindness to the world if Sherlock were asexual. John could imagine him kicking someone straight out of bed as soon as he had achieved orgasm. 'I'm done. Get out.'

Then he realised he was thinking about _Sherlock having an orgasm,_ and he went out for a long walk in the cold.

"I don't understand why you're upset," Feren said.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Then don't talk. But I don't understand it."

While out on this walk, John made an effort to make eye contact with and smile at women. His ruefully-cheerful demeanor usually worked in the long run, if he didn't take refusals too hard and tried his luck again elsewhere. He and Feren had to stay out for four hours, but by the time they got home John had the phone number of a cute and quirky barista whose rabbit dæmon rode in a little pouch in a sling around the girl's neck to snuggle adorably in her mesmerising cleavage. It did look a lovely spot. She gave him a grin that warmed him all over, and she admired Ferendala with obvious sincerity.

The napkin she'd written her number on somehow went missing before he could call. He never saw her working there again, but whether this was his bad luck in walking by on days she didn't work, or because she didn't work there anymore, it was still his bad luck.

His sister had long sneered at him for his attraction to girls with 'cute' dæmons. That was her type too, he'd pointed out once, and then Harry's wife Clara had walked in with her white silky sifaka lemur dæmon quivering in her arms, and hadn't _that_ been awkward.

Something else he didn't blog about was Vyarosse. Vyarosse, who on one day's acquaintance treated John as casually and intimately as though he were a lifelong family member. Vyarosse, who was somehow… different from other dæmons. But different how? The dæmon was odd, but so was the man, wasn't he?

Sherlock had said, nearly the first thing he had said when it came to their living together, was that he sometimes didn't talk for days, and John had doubted this. However, it turned out to be true. From time to time this really did happen.

But it didn't mean his dæmon remained silent.

John found it difficult to be out of eye contact with Ferendala. They could manage quite an amazing distance between them if only there were visibility. But to be rooms apart was a torment. This was nothing to Vyarosse and Sherlock. They did have a distance limit - Sherlock was no storybook witch, however much he looked like he could have been one in another life - but it was common enough for Vyarosse to follow John and Feren upstairs to their bedroom whilst Sherlock lay torpid on the sofa below. The Abyssinian cat dæmon sat alertly on John's bed, asked and answered questions. Sometimes he made little jokes.

And yes, he was a he. (Not that there was anything wrong with that!) John hadn't been sure at first, because it was hard to tell with some dæmons just by their speaking voice. Cats were so often ambiguous. But Ferendala had let it slip when referring to Vyarosse, and after that John had paid closer attention.

He was a male. And that was odd. Statistically, that is. It was fine, it was all fine.

Surely that was what had nagged at the back of John's mind as odd about Sherlock's dæmon. When he asked Feren outright, she had balked entirely at discussing the topic. Dæmons could be like that, John knew. They had influences and assocations that their human halves did not understand. And they did not tell one another's secrets. Feren had not thought Vyarosse's gender a secret, as it happened. She thought it was obvious to everyone,  or she would never have said 'he'.

"Can you always tell?" he asked her, and she said "Of course. Mycroft's is a male too, if it matters."

It didn't exactly matter. But it was… interesting. Mycroft Holmes' dæmon, Hyryne, was a serpent - some small exotic type with beautiful blue scales, one of the most striking dæmons John had ever seen in real life. In the parking garage that time, the dæmon had been hidden under his sleeve, probably wrapped around Mycroft's wrist, but had slithered down over his hand to twine around the umbrella handle while John watched. Then Mycroft had taken the little notebook from his pocket and taunted John a bit, testing his mettle.

He supposed he must have passed the test. If Mycroft had not wanted John Watson here, he doubtless had many possible ways of getting rid of the interloper at his easy disposal. He had a million eyes and thousands of hands.

John liked the phrase, and he wished he could use it in his blog. But another thing he did not blog about was Mycroft Holmes. That was only the commonest of sense.

After a few months it was clear that John's pension and savings were no longer adequate to his half of even the sharply discounted rent. He was going to have to work.

He expected Sherlock not to care whether John were there or not, but he was quite mistaken about that. The first day John was here at the flat Sherlock had said to Lestrade, "I _need_ an assistant." Or had that been for John's benefit?

But John endured tantrum after tantrum about his hours at the surgery, and about Sarah, which was so unfair, seeing as how she and her dæmon (a jaunty songbird with sharp little eyes) actually helped, and almost got killed for their trouble.

Sherlock was onto the cipher case and John spent so many hours helping with it that he got no sleep at all. It was ridiculous, it was like trying to stand an exam after partying all night. Without the pleasure of the partying. Instead his eyes felt smeared full of words from all the books, none of which he got to actually read. It was more like hunting for four leaf clover.  Feren wore a long-suffering, droopy look which he knew damn well he wore too.

And in the end, of course, it was Sherlock who figured out which book it was, all by himself. John wasn't even there. But then, John was very much somewhere else by then. With Sarah. Almost getting her killed.

And after that, Sarah faded out of the picture. Because even though she did miraculously still speak to John after all that, even though he continued to work at the surgery and they even tried one more fitful date, it was becoming painfully clear that Sherlock was simply not going to _let_ John pay that much attention to any other human being.

John wouldn't even have minded if it weren't for the constant backbeat of sexual frustration. Hesitantly at first and then more and more, thoughts intruded. Glances were saved up and remembered later.

And he struggled with it. He didn't fancy _men_. Sherlock was a _man_. This should have been effortlessly simple (as Ferendala heavily implied). It was not.

Quite possibly it had got something to do with that aura of total unavailability. If Sherlock were in a relationship with someone -

(Feren growled in the back of her throat.)

\- then say, if Sherlock were just clearly one thing or the other - classifiable - John thought he could look away. But Sherlock and his maddening neither/nor sexuality - and his unreasonably fascinating dæmon - had got John in close orbit. Could you resent gravity? It wouldn't even _notice_.

He sighed, lay back in his bed. Actually in his bed, at night, at a sort of decent hour to turn in. John felt as though he hardly knew what to do with a night's sleep anymore, he had become a stranger to them. An absentee.

One good way to get to sleep. He thought about porn; he thought about the barista's hypnotic breasts; he thought about the time when he and his second year med school girlfriend had nearly been caught fucking on the worktop in one of the labs…  The spice of danger and adrenaline had made them both desperate and the memory was vivid, the sour smell of the lab and the sweet scent of her shampoo and the fierce way she'd sucked on his tongue. When she came her voice would drop _down_ , low and throaty and out of control…

He worked himself with a slow hand, in no particular hurry, eyes closed. Ferendala was on the floor, politely quiet, completely disinterested in this kind of thing.

John thrust into his hand and let his head tip back, neck arching. It wasn't just fucking that he missed, it was all the touching as well, human heat, bumping and nuzzling, frantic heartbeat, her hands on his arse as well as the slippery clenching flutter of her pussy around his cock, mmm… her lips clumsy against his neck because he kept on making her come. And her voice throbbed lower and lower in his ear.

He sighed. Quietly. And the speed of his hand increased. He couldn't draw this out very much more, it had been too long and he needed to come. He needed to. He thought of her hands on him, replacing his own in his imagination - thought of _hands_ on him and a _voice_ low in his ear, saying his name, telling him to come, John, come _now_.

He did; so powerfully he had to bite his lips to keep himself from shouting.

John lay there trembling, eyes still shut, his breathing slowing down, the throbbing waves receding from the center of his body, semen cooling on his hand and belly. He needed to get something to clean himself up before he fell asleep like this. Opening his eyes, he pushed up on one elbow. And gasped, recoiling.

Vyarosse was sitting on the bed. Staring at him.

John shouted, "Jesus Christ! What the _hell!"_ Instinctively he tried to cover himself with his hands, and only made himself stickier. "You - Were - were you _watching me?"_

"You appear to be finished with... that," said the cat dæmon, primly. "I came in here to watch you sleep, in fact."

"That's hardly any better! Why are you watching me!"

"I want data. What's wrong with that?"

John firmly (though of course without touching him) ejected Vyarosse from his room. He cleaned up as best he could and lay back down, trying to find the sleep he'd been seeking, and wondered if tonight were the first time Sherlock's dæmon had watched him masturbate, or if it were even the first time he had come in to watch John sleep.

Did Sherlock tell him to do that? Or, well, ask, because Vyarosse was the sort of dæmon that you asked rather than told. Was it Sherlock's request, or Vyarosse's independent desire?

And what difference was there, really, between the two? They were like John and Ferendala. They were one.

John lay awake for hours, wondering and worrying - and starting suspiciously at any little noise that could have been cat feet. This was foolish, of course. You couldn't _hear_ cat feet. But he lay roiling with thoughts when he had been hoping for dreamless, boneless sleep. In the morning he was no better off for the early bedtime, and in fact was much the worse.


	3. Touch

John found out what it was like when Sherlock got bored. It wasn't pretty.

Sherlock with cases he liked was difficult enough. Sherlock without cases at all was a terror. He shot at the wall and his dæmon clawed the sofa, while John and Feren shouted and barked, respectively, to no avail. He sniped at John's writing, and Vyarosse jumped up and petulantly whipped everything off the desk with his paw, including John's favourite mug, still half-full of tea. The handle broke off. - It ended up holding pens, and John and Feren ended up out on another walk to cool their rising tempers.

What would they have done at times like this if John's leg hadn't healed? He didn't like to think about it.

Then there was the explosion across the street, the shoes in the basement flat and the series of deadly puzzles for Sherlock to figure out. The bomber took hostage after hostage and made them into puppets.

And Sherlock was enjoying it.

It was painful, all of it. John tried to treat it as Just A Case when he blogged about it. But it was not Just A Case.

Jim Moriarty and his mad-eyed fox dæmon joined the war in John's dreams.

People _died_. That poor old woman. And it felt as though John were the only one who even cared about her. All Sherlock could see was his own bloody brilliance and the long shadow of Moriarty beckoning him to play.

"Mycroft mentioned a battlefield," said Ferendala, "I think this is the kind of thing he meant."

It was. It was as arbitrary, as bloody as war, and civilians died just the same.

And just to rub it in, after taking him and Ferendala off the street with such humiliating ease, Moriarty had strapped a Semtex vest on him and pushed a wireless receiver into his ear and made him go out by himself. He'd held Feren on the other side of the door - literally. Held her. Touched her. John still shivered with disgust and shame whenever he thought of it. He could feel it right through the wall. The man clamped the dog between his knees and had a punishing grip on the back of her neck. She was more than strong enough to resist this, but she and John had each been threatened with the other. There were a lot of snipers in the building. There were a hell of a lot of explosives on John.

And the way Sherlock had _looked_ at him when he went out to the pool. The way he froze, and his eyes  - and Vyarosse's - widened, took in the lack of dæmon and even wondered, briefly, if John had truly been Moriarty all along.

Remembering that felt as bad as remembering the touch. That look on Sherlock's face, however brief. Assessing John as an enemy. Not even the first time John had laid eyes on him had Sherlock ever looked so _alien_. This must be what he looked like to other people, then. This was what he looked like to Donovan.

John delivered the lines he was given (and on the other side of the wall, while he fed the lines, Jim Moriarty _stroked_ John's dæmon's back with sickening familiarity, as though he were crooning _good dog_ ) and then at last John opened his coat and revealed the vest and what a relief it was, amongst the horror and violation and uncertainty, to see Sherlock _understand_ , see him sort through what happened. John felt reassured, despite how utterly shit their circumstances had become. He felt hope. One slender, pathetic thread of hope. A lifeline, when it was all you had.

He knew it the moment Feren was released. When she came back to his side he reached out and gripped a handful of the fur on her back (at the place where she'd been stroked, trying to rub the feeling out), and she leaned against his leg, trembling. The distance had not been any hardship, but being out of sight - and the touch, the fucking _touch_ \- had made John feel as though he were already dying.

_Please God, let us live._

Not the first time he'd thought that on the brink of death, but this time us meant four, not two.

And even so, when Sherlock met his eyes, John unhesitatingly gave his permission with that one glance, one nod, _Do what you have to._ John had long since proved that he was willing to kill. Now he proved he was willing to die. For Sherlock.

Once again, but rather differently this time, John thought he knew the end of his own story. And of Sherlock's, now. There was no time to think about whether it was a fitting end. It was just an end, and it was approaching fast.

In the end, they didn't die. There were no shots, there was no explosion. It had been a buildup to nothing. They were alive and they didn't even know why. Moriarty's phone call had been more interesting than them in that moment, that was all they knew.

They went home, after the police and bomb squad were done with them. They went home, and John looked at Sherlock and Sherlock looked at John, and John reached out to touch him on the shoulder. He was about to say something, he didn't have any idea what. But Sherlock flinched away from the touch. He walked away and went into his room and shut the door.

And John was ashamed of himself. What had he been thinking? Sherlock was surely, as he'd been assuming all along, asexual, and so what was John doing making advances? It was crazy, stupid, more than unwelcome, it was a threat to what they had - whatever it was that they had. And so he resolved to never make that mistake again. It was his mistake. It was fine. It was all fine.

Ferendala stood drooping, head and tail down.

The smell of chlorine seemed to have followed John from the pool and would not leave his nostrils, even after a long shower. He did everything he could think of to feel normal. He made tea. He scalded his mouth on the first sip, and the rest went cold. He looked at a newspaper, but he didn't retain a word. The same went for any of the web sites he tried to read. It filtered through his head like air, leaving nothing behind.

Sherlock did not emerge from his room.

John and Feren went upstairs to bed. John had taken to closing and locking his door after the incident with Vyarosse, but tonight he left it open. Just in case. The cat dæmon might have something to say - helpful, perhaps - insulting too, most likely. But as long as he could reassure John that Sherlock was all right, and that he was not unforgivably repulsed by John's ill considered gesture, that was all that John could hope for.

And sure enough, about an hour after he had gone up, Vyarosse did come upstairs to John's room.

But so did Sherlock.

John stared mutely at him as he came in, and found no words whatsoever in his brain, not even the most obvious possible questions. Vyarosse jumped up on the bed, and Sherlock came to sit down on it too.

John pushed up on his elbows. What was this? Was this some explanation, or… But Sherlock didn't say a word either. The upstairs bedroom seemed to be a place of such high altitude that the air was too thin to support speech.

Feren wagged her tail once. It thumped the floor.

Sherlock reached out with one hand and John tried not to flinch at the touch of warm fingertips on his cheek. Slowly, as though fearing to spook an animal, he leaned in to the touch. Just to show it was welcome. But without escalating. Sherlock didn't seem to have any more idea than John did of what he intended to do, of why he was there. But his eyes were as intent and luminous on John's as they ever were on his microscope.

Vyarosse began to purr. His eyes were luminous too.

This was the moment, John thought, this should have been the moment when one of them, at least,  had the courage to kiss the other. But whether or not it had anything to do with courage, this did not happen.

Feren, who was both too big and too polite to try to crowd herself onto John's bed, sat beside it and rested her head on it instead. Vyarosse got up from where he was sitting, never losing eye contact with John, and sat beside Ferendala, rubbing his cheek against hers. John felt it in the center of his chest, and the purr was loud enough to fill the room.

"What do you want, John?" Sherlock said. John didn't often hear him sound uncertain.

"Me?" said John. "You're the one who came up to my room."

"Vyarosse said you left the door open."

Oh. Yes.

"Well - I don't - I don't know what I want," John said.

Ferendala said, "Touch."

John gulped. But he could hardly call his dæmon a liar. "Yes."

"We know," said Vyarosse. He settled down beside Feren's head, leaning against her. John could almost feel the purr resonating in his own bones.

Sherlock pushed John till he moved over and lay down beside him. There was the awkwardest of pauses that went on seemingly forever, and then finally Sherlock turned towards John and just engulfed him in an all-limbs hug. John squeaked in surprise, but Feren's tail thumped the floor three times in approval.

And then he wrapped his arms around Sherlock's back and closed his eyes and just breathed, and breathed, and breathed. It was too warm and his bed was too small and his arm was falling asleep. And it was embarrassing. And it was wonderful.

Touch. Sherlock's body occupying his bed, invading his personal space as thoroughly as could be possible without actual sex. They were both in pyjamas and Sherlock was still in his dressing gown and there was almost no skin to skin contact, yet this first time… it seemed all right to John. The dæmons had fur. The humans had clothes. They weren't lovers. Not yet.

Somehow the thought of it was easier to contemplate now, though. Sherlock's head was heavy against John's neck, and his hair was so soft, and smelled so good. John never used the sleek and expensive looking bottles that were in the shower, but he'd noticed that they contained all sorts of botanical this and that, many flowers combined in the subtle honey scent of Sherlock's hair. John could touch it. If he wanted to. He did want to. He touched it. The curls twined around his fingers invitingly.

Sherlock sighed against him. A little moan of simple pleasure, but in his deep voice it was almost filthy. The heat of his breath was a sudden shock to John's skin. And John caught his breath, held it.

Some silent communication passed between the dæmons, and Ferendala pulsed a feeling to him, a warning, a thought:

_No sex now._

No. No, of course not. This wasn't - he wasn't - well, they weren't like that. Not yet.

Not ever? There was no way of knowing.

But though there was (even John had to admit it, if silently) a definite stab of disappointment, there was quite a lot more relief in knowing that Sherlock did not _expect_ anything here except touch, and that, John knew how to do. So he ignored the stir of lust that the sound of that voice had roused in him, and cradled tall, bony Sherlock in his arms, in his bed, as though they did this every night. As though it were not a complete inversion of what he had ever expected his life to contain.

And when he slept, John did not dream about the war, or about that mad bastard who manhandled his dæmon - not that night.

He didn't exactly sleep untroubled, of course. Sherlock took up more space than he needed to, of course he did. No wonder he had such a big bed downstairs, it wasn't as though he entertained anyone else in it. He migrated from corner to corner of John's bed, dragging John along with him, and John woke often, but each time he did he had the pleasure of settling down again against a warm, welcoming body. A very specific warm, welcoming body.

John worried about the inevitable morning erection, but when he woke, he found that Sherlock and Vyarosse had gone downstairs, and Feren was looking up at him and proudly wagging her tail.

"You look pleased," he said to her.

"Of course," she said, "you've wanted to touch him for ages. You enjoyed it."

"So did you."

"Vyarosse has very soft fur," she said dreamily.

He tried to sigh, to indicate that he hadn't exactly had all the enjoyment he might have liked, but found that he could not keep the smile off his face. It had felt as good to touch as it might have done to have sex. It gave him the same sort of sheen on the world in the light of day. He felt good. Yesterday's nightmare was over.

But when he got downstairs, he found Sherlock in a worse mood than ever, pacing and glowering.

He ought to have expected it. The way Moriarty just broke everything off and strode away, leaving them without any explanation, without any resolution, it was like spitting in Sherlock's face. The moment John had entered the room Sherlock whirled on him and snarled,

"He's out there, John! He _walked away._ We learned almost _nothing_ about him."

John looked to Vyarosse, who crouched on the near arm of the sofa, lashing his tail. No help forthcoming there. Feren went over to the sofa, but the cat jumped up to one of the bookshelves and washed his face with furious, self-absorbed intensity.

Just last night, touch had been something possible. Today, it was as unthinkably remote as it had ever been, like wanting to touch the moon.

Sherlock had always had a kind of space around him that wasn't to be breached by anyone. Mrs Hudson was the one sporadic exception to this. He'd give her a little hug, kiss her cheek. Otherwise no. Sherlock wasn't fastidious about germs, about dirt, even about corpses or bits therefrom. If he was on the trail of something for a case he'd happily paddle about in a skip like Scrooge McDuck in money. It was living people he didn't want to touch. He asked constantly to be handed things, but one didn't touch his fingers in the process. It just didn't happen. That first time he and John shook hands, Sherlock had been wearing gloves.

Sherlock started pushing the envelope himself some time ago, of course. Asking John to get his phone out of his jacket pocket pushed it right up to the line and leaned over it. Still no chance of touching his skin, but the scent of him, the heat of nearness...

"John," Sherlock said sharply.

John realised he had started drifting closer, and adjusted his course to the kitchen.

Nothing could please Sherlock in the wake of Moriarty's dismissal. He hadn't properly concluded the case, so he still wouldn't eat. He snarled at the news items John read out. Missing persons, boring. Suspicious reversal of votes in Italy, dull. Even the total disappearance of a hijacked chemical tanker truck got a cold shoulder, and John had saved that one for last. "Not even a four?" "Oh John just leave me alone," muffled into the cushion. "The whole world is boring and _hateful_." Vyarosse, crouched in the chair, had his back turned too.

So last night had been a one time aberration, brought on by the danger and adrenaline of that terrible scene by the side of the pool. Their near brush with death. Not that they didn't have those reasonably often, but this particular one had been particularly fraught, and in the end it had been - well - anticlimactic.

Last night wouldn't happen again, and John mustn't dwell on it. Message received.

This was why he was so surprised that night when he woke to find Sherlock sliding into the bed beside him.

"You know," said John, half into his pillow, "your bed is bigger."

"I would be waiting for the rest of my life for you to climb into it," said Sherlock.

It wasn't every night, because Sherlock did not always choose to sleep. But when he did, he would be there in John's bed, imprisoning John's limbs, complicating his sleep, and relentlessly ignoring any inadvertent erections that arose during the night.

It was after this that Vyarosse relaxed enough around John to let him see the truth.

John would see some flying thing out of the corner of his eye and on turning his head would find the cat sitting near, washing his elegant face with a droll tilt to the whiskers.

Sherlock would be at microscope or desk or embodying tragedy on the sofa, would never look up, but Vyarosse would wink at John before hopping down to stretch and scratch the rug.

Or there was the mouse John chased into the bathroom, only to find, once the lightswitch moved under his hand, Vyarosse blinking his blue-grey eyes against the light, lashing his tail and complaining, "Damn, it got away," and parading out, as though there really were somewhere in the bathroom the mouse might have got away _to_.

And then of course there was the time with the bird in the alley. That was right in front of John, no ambiguity, no room at all for wiggling. The cat clinging to the shoulder of Sherlock's Belstaff coat was suddenly a peregrine falcon - still with blue-grey eyes, and similar markings, undeniably Vyarosse even if John hadn't just _seen_ him change - and launched up several stories to look in a certain window. He'd almost been shot.

Sherlock's dæmon was unsettled.


	4. There's A Difference Between Danger And Poison

Sherlock's dæmon was unsettled.

Once John realised that, so much made sense. Though so much else didn't, because it was practically not _possible_.

It could happen sometimes, obviously. But usually the people weren't... They weren't competent. The developmentally disabled's dæmons sometimes didn't settle for their entire lives, though given the obvious limitations, they didn't tend to be very creative. Sometimes they were dangerous. But these cases were outliers. They were labelled as severe, had to live in hospital or assisted housing.

There was another way it could happen, of course. John saw it in war. Severe trauma, brain damage... advanced-stage Alzheimer's could do it, he knew. Once a human's dæmon _un_ settled, it was unstable. Death always followed. It was a mercy. No question.

And yet here was Sherlock, and Vyarosse could change, and did change. Sherlock was long, long since an adult, and his dæmon _was not settled._

It wasn't as though it were against the law for an adult to have an unsettled dæmon, any more than it was against the law to have two heads.

Sherlock shamelessly made use of his dæmon's ability to change, once he saw John was not disturbed by it - not disturbed enough to mention it, anyway. John was intrigued, actually, but it was a little unseemly to show so much interest in the dæmon of someone else. Even if you were sleeping with them. Or, more honestly, if they were sometimes choosing to sleep with you.

Vyarosse became all kinds of useful things - the way a dæmon could for an imaginative and troublemaking child. Ferendala hadn't always been a wolfhound, of course: she had tried all the usual forms when she and John were young. Sherlock used them all now. The combination of finch, moth or ant, and raccoon could break and enter practically anywhere, especially given telepathic communication with Sherlock.

Once, Vyarosse became a tiger. Just to show he could be that big if he chose, bigger than Feren. Feren had cocked her head to one side, given her tail one lazy swish, and said, "Oh it's you," in a mild tone of amusement, as though Vyarosse had just become a baby elephant.

"Good, isn't it?" rumbled Sherlock's dæmon, vibrating the walls with the huge low thrum of his voice.

But when others were around, even Mrs Hudson, Vyarosse reverted to the Abyssinian cat form. The one exception to this was Molly, as John found out to his surprise one day in the mortuary. When it came to autopsies, Vyarosse would take whatever form offered him the best view of the cadaver. Hummingbird was a useful option, John had to admit.

And at night, Sherlock twined around him like a vine that might overgrow the bed and the flat and the street and all, and keep them there for a hundred years.

There was little danger, John thought, of anyone's being awakened with a kiss.

***

When Lestrade came to see them, the wounds on his face and hands were livid and shocking. The dæmon on his shoulder, usually so proud and fine, looked half wilted with misery. When John saw her posture, Feren stood up and stared at them both, silent but clear in her attention. The scratches and bites Lestrade was sporting matched the claws and beak of his own osprey dæmon. Two red marks were wincingly close to his left eye.

That was what John could see for himself. Sherlock surely saw much more.

Sherlock said, "Ghislaine, why was he trying to restrain you? What were you trying to do?"

Leave it to Sherlock to address someone's dæmon directly without so much as a word of greeting or a by-your-leave to the human half, thought John. But Lestrade never reproached Sherlock for things like that. And the question was very much to the point.

Ghislaine wailed, "I didn't mean it! I wasn't trying to hurt!"

Lestrade lifted a hand to stroke and calm her. Both hands had been bitten and clawed.

Sherlock said, "Some of those wounds are from someone else's dæmon."

That was shocking too.

"Anderson's," said Lestrade. "Ferret. Her name's - "

"I don't care what her name is."

"It's Tialarel," said Vyarosse, in a bored tone, from atop the bookshelf. "She's much less stupid than Anderson. He keeps all his brains in his dæmon. And she's a polecat, not a ferret."

John felt Feren moving to stand beside him, her back warm and solid under his hand. He gripped her fur gratefully. "Greg." He sounded calm - thanks to Feren. But the thought of being attacked by one's own dæmon was a deeply uncomfortable one, and being attacked by someone _else's_ \--  "Tell us what _happened_."

Lestrade told them about the murder investigation turned unexpected drugs bust. They had found a man dead in his lab with a pile of something that looked like Dust, of all things.

"You know how - if you've been right there when someone dies, and their dæmon -- "

"I know what it looks like," said Sherlock flatly. John just nodded. He'd been to war. He was a doctor. He knew too. It was _beautiful_ when a dæmon imploded in death. Dust to Dust - and then into nothing. Heartbreaking, but glorious.

"It looked like that, but not swirling about in the air and going out like sparks, like it's supposed to. It was - it looked like - _Dust_ \- sitting calmly in a dish on a scale. He'd been _weighing_ it. Weighing it out into little bags. And no sooner did we see all this than - than our dæmons - went mad. Anderson's was up and off his shoulder before anyone could move. Just dove right at it and started eating it!"

"A dæmon? _Eating?"_

"Oh yes. Well, it wasn't food, was it, it was _Dust_. That dæmon stuffed that Dust into her mouth till she keeled over in seizures, and Anderson went down on the floor foaming at the mouth. And Ghislaine - "

"I couldn't _help_ it," said the osprey, trembling. "It smelled so good, and it was so pretty, I wanted it so much. I had to have it. I needed to make it part of me. Oh Greg I'm so _sorry_. I hurt you in so many places. I didn't want to."

"It's all right, girl. Steady. - I had to stop her, that's all. And it wasn't easy. I could see Anderson and his dæmon were effectively poisoned. We had to get the dæmons out of the room first, then Anderson. He's in hospital. He's in a fucking _coma_ , he's on _life support._ They've got his dæmon under _restraint_.

"So - Sherlock - we need you to come and have a look at this Dust for us, without letting your dæmon get _anywhere_ near it. Anderson may not be your favourite - but this - whatever this is, an overdose of it put a man down in seconds, and my own dæmon just about tried to kill me to get it. - No, sweetheart, I _know_ you didn't mean to - but _you_ did that - and as far as I'm concerned, that means this is the most dangerous shit I have ever seen. Whoever this guy was, and whatever he was doing with this Dust, he was weighing it out to sell to somebody. We think he already has."

As usual, Sherlock refused to ride in a police car, and in the taxi John could feel the excitement rolling off Sherlock in waves. It had been months now since Moriarty and though there had been cases, nothing had lit the fire in Sherlock's eye the way this case was already doing.

John enjoyed danger, yes, he even relished it, but thinking of a threat to his dæmon gave him pause. Or to Sherlock's. Anderson might be a fool, but he did not deserve to be in a coma. Lestrade's dæmon had, from the looks of it, tried to put out her human's eye in the fight to get to this stuff. It was serious business. It was going to be up to him to temper Sherlock's excitement with common sense. Again.

***

"I am not a babysitter," John muttered, hands in his pockets.

"I am not a _baby_ ," said Vyarosse, lashing his tail.

Dæmons couldn't be left unattended at a crime scene. Especially not this crime scene.

This meant that John had to wait outside the door with Feren and Vyarosse while Sherlock went inside. HAZARDOUS AREA / DUST HAZARD and ABSOLUTELY NO DÆMONS BEYOND THIS POINT read the signage.

They'd had to write the signs up by hand. There was nothing standard about this. Lestrade and his people were baffled by the idea of Dust being treated as a drug -- what would people _want_ it for? Was it pleasurable in the tiny doses, and how could they safely test this theory? What did it do to the body and the brain of the human? Or if they were using it as a weapon - just look at Anderson - shouldn't there have been more dæmons gone berserk? More people in comas?

"Well look who it is," said Sally Donovan, and there was a crazy look in her eye. "Dog, cat, and mouse."

"And bitch," said John.

Immediately he wished he hadn't said it, but she had rather come at him swinging. _Mouse_ , fuck her anyway. Still. He had to remember. It was her lover in a coma, but his wife who got to be at the bedside. Donovan's big brute of a German shepherd dæmon was more subdued than John had ever seen.

Feren didn't like him, but John could feel her pity for Donovan herself.

Every once in a while, they disagreed in their opinion of a person. It could happen. That was how divided feelings were divided.

"I suppose you don't want us to help you then," Vyarosse said to Donovan, and the way he said 'us' was the way dæmons said 'us' about themselves as half of a pair. She stiffened, her face twisting in disgust, but John didn't know if the disgust was at being addressed by Sherlock's dæmon, or by the dæmon's nonstandard gender, or whatever her problem had ever been.

"Don't talk to me, freak," she hissed.

"Meow," said Vyarosse.

As soon as Donovan had gone Vyarosse reached up and tugged at John's trouser leg with one tawny clawed paw, pricking through to the skin of his thigh.

"Ow!" John stared down at him. "What are you doing?" Vyarosse had never _touched_ John before. And now that he had for the first time, John was pretty sure he'd drawn blood.

"John it's amazing," said the dæmon, but John realised at once with a little shock that it was Sherlock talking through Vyarosse's mouth. "There's a great big storage dewar of liquid nitrogen. Why is the Dust just lying there? Because it's been _frozen!_ It's - _cold Dust._ Its molecular structure has been altered. There's an excellent microscope in here. You need to see this, it's the most gorgeous crystalline structure, maybe even polymorphic! Elegant. I need to study the lattice parameters - "

It wasn't normal to talk through your dæmon. A dæmon wasn't a puppet. You didn't _do_ that. It was an embarrassing early phase kids went through when they were learning to talk, a bit like compulsive masturbation. 'We don't do that in front of other people.'

 _Sherlock_ wasn't normal. John set his teeth and acted as though he _were_ , acted as though it were _fine_ to carry on a conversation that way.

"Let's get one thing straight right now," said John. "You are not taking any of that shit out of there to study, got that, not one _particle_. I don't care how _elegant_ it is. It _should_ be studied, of course it should, and you should be in on it. But in safe conditions. And for the love of god _not in our flat._ Okay?"

He squatted down. Feren leaned against him. "I'm talking to _you_ now, Vyarosse. You heard Lestrade and Ghislaine. You think you could resist it for one second? Do you _really?"_

Sherlock's dæmon just looked at him, the tip of his tail just barely twitching. John could almost hear him thinking 'I am _far_ superior to stupid Anderson and his stupid polecat' and that was true, but...

"What about you, love?" John asked his own dæmon.

"I don't want it near me. I don't think you could hold _me_ back, if it's so bad it could make Ghislaine act that way. I _don't_ want you or Sherlock in a coma," the wolfhound said, and though she was replying to John, she was looking straight at Vyarosse. "There's a difference between _danger_ and _poison_. You can't _dare_ poison not to poison you."

Vyarosse said at last, so sulkily that John really didn't know who was speaking, "Ghislaine _is_... one of the least stupid dæmons I've had to meet."

This was true. It had been terrible to see her cowering and guilty. She had been a fine, proud beauty every other time John had seen her, calm and keen and visibly powerful. Like Ferendala she was a dæmon who visibly lent dignity to her human half.

"Oh," ostentatious sigh, "all _right."_

No knowing, of course, which of them said it, or if either of them meant it.

John sighed, got back to his feet. The door opened, and Sherlock came out. He had that _look_ in his eye. Work lust. Of course he did. He was onto this elegant crystal structure business.

"I'd like to have a look now," said John.

"No time," Sherlock started to say, but John said firmly, "There is time, and it's my turn, and you can stay here with Feren for five damn minutes," pulling on gloves, pushing through and going in without waiting for an answer.

It was _hard_ to be on the other side of a closed door from his dæmon. They were not very far apart, the pull was not so painful at this distance. But not being able to see her, and her not being able to see him, made a difference. Especially after the pool. But the only way to cope with it was to push through it, John felt. There was a tall thin window set into the door. They _could_ see each other, even if they didn't right now.

He would have liked to go straight to the microscope, to see what Sherlock was on about, but first he took a look at the body lying curled up on the floor.

Male, mid 40s, cause of death... probably heart attack. Dead at least twenty-four hours. John examined the hands, the fingernails. Glanced up at the worktop.

John stood up and took out his mobile to snap a picture of the pile of Dust on the laboratory scale and scattered all around it, presumably by Anderson's dæmon. As he expected, it looked different in the picture than to the naked eye. What looked like fiery swirls became dull and blurry. Maybe with a proper camera, set to a long exposure, it might be different.

Yes, it certainly did look as though the dead man had been doing a brisk business, weighing this cold Dust into tiny self-seal bags. John had never been in an illegal-drugs lab before, but he'd seen a few on telly. In the bags the stuff looked even more innocuous, like sample packets of curry spices.

His eye fell on the large liquid nitrogen container. Past it were various machines in which, presumably, the process was performed. But...

What about the man's dæmon - how had he kept her away from the Dust while he did his work? John looked around. He didn't know what form the now departed dæmon had, but if she had been small, she might have been kept safe in a cupboard or some other container.

And where did the Dust come from, _before_ it was frozen? Where did they get it? Where did it come from?

Frowning, John turned towards the microscope. Just a quick look before he went back out and - and then -

He stopped short, eyes going wide.

A tingling sensation - on his back -

A _touch_. More intimate than a lover's. Touching him. _Touching_.

_Oh. Oh my **god**._

Sherlock. Was _touching_. John's dæmon.

It had to be Sherlock, it couldn't have been anyone else, because Feren was actually allowing it. _Enjoying_ it. Her pleasure eclipsed John's shock. But he couldn't _stop_ being shocked.

They slept together, yes. Their dæmons touched, yes. But this.

His hand was stroking down her back. _John's_ back. He could _feel_ it. Fingertips grazing. No gloves.

"What are you _doing_ ," he gasped, though Sherlock couldn't hear him out there.

Moriarty had done this, too.

Turning away from the scene he stumbled towards the door, only avoiding tripping over the body by instinct.

"Ready now?" said Sherlock languidly, as John got the door shut behind him and rounded on him, wide eyed. Feren wagged her tail, but only once.

"Did you. Do - THAT. Just to _hurry me up?"_ John was incredulous, breathless with anger. _"What the fuck is wrong with you?"_

Sherlock just looked at him. Vyarosse sprang up into his arms and climbed up to his shoulder. They stared at John with identically blank eyes.

Then Sherlock turned away, and he walked so fast John had to run to keep up. After a while he gave up running and just plodded along behind with Ferendala at his side. Up ahead Sherlock got a cab, but he didn't wait for John to get in it with him. It pulled away: John was on his own.

So was Sherlock, really, because John was always the one to pay for the cabs. It was highly doubtful that Sherlock had any money on him at all. He didn't quite seem to believe in its existence, despite it being such a common motivator of crime.

They walked home, rather than find another taxi. It wasn't a very nice day, but John was disturbed and needed the exercise, and Feren waited patiently for him to speak.

When they went through the Park he finally felt enough of a sense of privacy. An alley of trees, dripping with rain, and a soggy bench. He was already soaked, and they needed to talk.

She leaned against his legs, and he put his arms around her neck and leaned his head against her back. Her thick, pale, shaggy fur did not have that 'wet dog' smell - she was a dæmon, not a hound. But her fur was wet, just the same.

"I can't believe he _did_ that," he said at last.

"Are you really angry?" said Feren. "I thought you liked him to touch us. I wanted it, anyway. It was nice. Kind of warm and shivery. Like what his voice does to you. You felt it."

He was not going to answer that.

"Did he - _ask_ first?"

"He said he was _going_ to touch first, I think to give me a chance to say 'don't' or move away. That's sort of asking."

"What did you do?"

"Wagged tail."

John groaned, pressing his heated face against his dæmon's back. "He's like a child," he said, muffled. "He has no sense of boundaries. At all!"

"He's strange," said Feren. "But he's ours. Why worry about it?"


	5. Do Try To Keep Up

"You should have walked faster," Vyarosse said to him, when he and Feren got home. Sherlock was in his bedroom, the door shut. "You missed it. The cabbie had a _kangaroo_ dæmon. Which was both ludicrous and apt. And he took up the whole front seat!"

John, now in dressing gown, was rubbing Ferendala dry with a towel. "Why was it apt, was the cabbie Australian?"

"No, it's apt because a cabbie _carries people._ Do try to keep up. - In all ways. It was embarrassing when _he_ couldn't pay. _He_ made me go get Mrs Hudson."

Vyarosse never seemed to actually say _Sherlock_. His attitude towards his human half sometimes seemed like his human half's towards Mycroft, enacted in miniature.

Except for that bad habit of puppet-talking. And... and puppet- _watching_. Because John had just realised who actually had been watching him masturbate.

Uncomfortable, that thought, in front of Vyarosse. And then of all moments for Ferendala to touch her nose to the other dæmon's, one of those silent communications.

"I suppose you're dry enough," he said, unnecessarily, inconsequentially, and threw the towel into the laundry hamper.

When he went to bed that night he _almost_ locked his door.

John grew up with very little expectation of privacy. And then there was the Army. Now he had a room with a door, and a door with a lock.

"Princess in a tower," snarked Feren, as she lay down on the floor, watching John hesitate with his hand on the latch.

"You think it's okay, do you?" John was exasperated. On edge. Freaked out. "You'd like it if I did that with you? Used you to - watch?"

"I don't think that's what they're doing."

This brought him up short. "What do you mean?"

But she only looked at him. No matter how well you knew your dæmon, there were always blank walls somewhere. Things they could not or would not say. This was one of them. Another dæmon's secrets were sacrosanct.

John sighed, left the door unlocked and let himself tip over and fall onto the bed on his back.

"I don't like it when you know things I don't," he said plaintively.

The bed bounced with her jump up onto it. She settled down next to him, fitting herself along his side.

"It goes both ways, you know," she said. Her warmth and heartbeat were soothing. Her voice was sweet. Her patient love radiated between them. "You know things I don't too. I don't understand the sex things you're so anxious about. I feel you being anxious but I can't feel why."

"This isn't a sex thing!"

"Oh John of _course_ it is. We _love_ them. We've never loved _anyone_ so much. I let him touch me, what do you think that means? And for you love feelings go with sex feelings. What's the problem?"

"He. Is. A. Man! For Christ's sake - "

She sighed. Deeply. There was no sigh like the sigh of a wolfhound. It was big and deep and it thought better of you, it really did.

John could not explain to her what the problem was: even if it _were_ so easy to admit what he wanted - he could not bear the thought of rejection and comtempt. Of revealing need that could not then be covered up again, so that Sherlock would see it every time he turned that stare on John and John would have nowhere to hide. He would be made small - smaller than he was. He would be reduced to _pitiful_.

They had most certainly crossed a line into intimacy, but it wasn't enough. John knew he should be grateful, but he longed for more, whatever it meant about him.

"This feeling, I understand," Ferendala said quietly. "I do understand this. You're afraid to lose them. But you're forgetting something very important, aren't you?"

"What," not even wanting to hear the answer.

"They love _us_ ," she said, calm and sure. "They watch us. They want us here. If you couldn't feel that today... if you don't feel that at night, then you're impossibly silly and I'm grateful not to be a human."

John lay awake for hours. But Sherlock and Vyarosse stayed downstairs. No sleep for them when a case was on. They might even have gone out. And so, no touch. John missed it for itself despite the inherent frustration. And he felt guilty for the frustration.

Was he so selfish? Wasn't this already more than he had ever imagined? All of the intimacy he craved and none of the terrifying activities?

Some of these activities were starting to become considerably less terrifying in John's imagination.

 _I don't just want it for myself,_ he thought. _Not just pleasure for myself. I want it for him. For both of us._

What would Sherlock be like - look like, sound like - in pleasure? John wanted so badly to know. But he had to remind himself, and puncture the balloon of that lofty-sounding wish, he might never know this, Sherlock might never want this, and _that was going to have to be okay._

It was going to have to be enough, because John knew he really didn't have a choice. Love didn't give him a choice.

As he drifted off at last, he wondered (not for the first time, certainly) exactly _how_ it was that Vyarosse was unsettled, and that Sherlock was sane. And how John was going to find out.

***

Sherlock was out when John got up. He had never left a note for any reason. No reply to the texts John sent while he worked his way through coffee and toast. John shrugged and ran a bath.

A little while later, he heard Sherlock returning and was just taking a breath to call out to him when the bathroom door was pushed open. Vyarosse came thundering in, jumped up on the sink, and cannonballed right into the tub.

John shouted "Ah!" in surprise and dismay; a cat in the tub was a Red Alert situation for any naked human being, especially a male one! Ferendala jumped up from the bath mat and barked, once, at about the same moment as John's shout. John instinctively drew his knees up, curling up around his vulnerable parts, dreading the sting of flailing cat paws as the silly little bastard tried to claw his way out.

An otter surfaced at the other end of the tub and floated on his back, whippy tail wiggling. His droll otter face was a study in cuteness. The _whiskers_. And the little _hands_ clutched together on his chest under his chin just exactly the way Sherlock -

"Oh for Christ's sake," John shouted. "VYAROSSE GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY BATH!"

Not even his _own_ dæmon - ! Well, but that wasn't so much a taboo, just that Feren was so big she couldn't fit in a tub with him. Vyarosse ignored him, anyway.

As a result of this little stunt, fully a third of the water from John's bath was now splashed around the room, all over Ferendala, and all over John's formerly dry towel and dressing gown.

"Something good must have happened," Feren said to the otter Vyarosse, standing beside the tub and leaning her head in to sniff at him.

Sherlock appeared in the doorway, and he did indeed look exceedingly pleased with himself.

"I've had another look at that cold Dust. A closer look. It's brilliant!"

"Trying to have a bath here!"

"Hurry up John, you're perfectly clean."

"What do you mean hurry up, where are we going?"

"Print shop. To print these!" He waved a memory stick as though John should be able to scan its contents visually.

"And they are..."

"Extremely high-resolution images from the Thomson microscope at Bart's. They won't let me use their printer anymore. They say it costs them _money_. John come _on!_ Vyarosse, pull the plug."

"Now wait - !" but the otter had already dived for it and the bath water started to drain away with loud gurgling noises.

John's temper was not improved by his soaking wet towel and clothes and dressing gown, but there was no shutting out the anbaric aura of excitement which now filled the flat, like extra brain waves of Sherlock's bouncing between the walls.

But when they got to the print shop the files were wrong. The wrong type, and too big, and no amount of unpleasantness from Sherlock could get him what he wanted.

And so it was back to Bart's for the files in a different format, or so John assumed.

When they got there, John had to endure several sharp questions on Sherlock's behalf without answering any of them before he managed to make his escape. It wasn't as though he could easily hide from anyone, with a dæmon as big as Feren, but even if he were Sherlock's keeper (which he emphatically was not) John did not have to stand around listening to his scoldings in absentia.

The Thomson microscope was far from Molly's mortuary, but she was here all the same, her doe eyes fixed on Sherlock. Sherlock must have been using her for errands or assistance, or else she would not still have had her doe eyes on. Her raven dæmon, on the other hand, was interested in what Sherlock was doing, not in his person.

Sherlock was, as usual, dressed in beautifully cut clothes that lingered on him tightly and were nothing but provocation. John looked him over and assumed the effect on Molly must have been almost overpowering in this small lab, where it was possible to smell the faint sweet scent of Sherlock's shampoo and -

Vyarosse glanced at John, and John looked away from Sherlock entirely.

Yes, he knew what Molly saw in Sherlock. He didn't have to theorise about it. He knew it damn well for himself. He should only count himself lucky that Sherlock somehow did not seem to notice it in John, or else he would have manipulated John with it as shamelessly as he did Molly. In front of everyone.

Funny qualifier, that. Would he mind it less in private?

Feren nudged John's leg, and he remembered where they were.

Sherlock was hunched and muttering and oblivious to all things but what he could see in the microscope. Clearly it was fascinating, something Sherlock considered to be worth his time. A little too worth his time.

"Sherlock."

No response.

"Sherlock!!"

"Mmm...?"

"Vyarosse, bite him, will you please?"

John was speaking facetiously, but Sherlock's dæmon, in his cat form, leaned in quickly and bit Sherlock on the back of his hand.

Sherlock wheeled on John.

"You're supposed to be taking pictures," said John. "Remember? File format?" After all that fuss in the print shop that Sherlock wasn't seeing what he needed to see and had to have it printed, and having to come back here.

"This is the wrong scope," Sherlock said, looking excited. "I need colour. Molly, go and see if the Oatley is in use. - Please."

John wondered whether he had even noticed Vyarosse biting him at all. As Molly scampered off to do what Sherlock could perfectly well have done for himself, Feren nudged John again as though to say, _If I bit you you'd know it!_

The Oatley - the scanning anbaron microscope, as opposed to the Thomson, could give images in colour. Images that were even _more_ expensive to have massive prints made of. Of course. Molly reported back to say it wasn't in use for the next twenty minutes, and they'd better hurry.

John jumped when he saw Sherlock pull the specimen out of the tray. That was _cold Dust!_ But Feren did not react to it, though John, his heart pounding with adrenaline, put his hand on her back just in case.

"Relax, John," Sherlock said. "It's completely inert. I prepared the sample myself. You see Vyarosse. You saw Molly's dæmon. It's fine."

John still held back from it a bit, feeling the same way he would about a case with BIOHAZARD or RADIOACTIVE stencilled on it. There were plenty of both such things in the hospital, but nothing he would have felt he had to protect his dæmon from.

In the Oatley lab, Sherlock sat right down at the microscope station and started loading the sample into the vacuum chamber. This alone took several minutes, then there was a lot of fiddling and focussing with the computer controls, and Molly, increasingly anxious, went out to see if she could stall the next rightful user of the equipment before Sherlock got in trouble again.

They'd been there fifteen minutes before Sherlock finally started getting actual images on the main screen. John had finally relaxed and sat down in a nearby rolling chair.

Sherlock frowned, and clicked things, and frowned some more, leaning in so close to the screen that it was a wonder his nose didn't bump it. But then he sighed and leaned back. Fishing the memory stick from his pocket, he plugged it into an available port, then did some more clicking. The hard drive chugged, and a little light on the memory stick flickered on and off.

"Found what you're looking for?"

"Yes."

"I'd think you would sound more pleased about it," said John. He didn't understand what he was seeing on the screen, but it was certainly pretty. It was like some computer-generated art, neon-lit lattices of crystal twirling into snowflake corkscrews. It was lovely. Almost hypnotic for a still image.

"I believe I see now how it's done. What we need to find out is... what is it for?"

"What do you mean? What is any drug for?" Recreational drugs, he meant.

Sherlock shook his head. "Even the most inimical things people do to themselves... they do it for pleasure, at the very least. They get something out of it, even if only... absence of feeling. But what does this do, what pleasure does it give? Why are people distributing this?"

"What is it for," repeated John. They had had this conversation already, in bits and pieces, since yesterday. Sherlock was rehashing this, why? For John's benefit, he assumed. _Do try to keep up._

He thought about poor Ghislaine and the wailing distress in her voice.

Sherlock went on, "Dæmons don't eat - so why did they want to eat this substance? Why did they have to?"

John shook his head. He did not understand.

"It put Anderson in hospital," he said. "Could it be a weapon?" He tried to imagine some terrorist thing - powders in envelopes - unwitting recipients with their dæmons going mad.

Sherlock said brutally, "Anderson could lobotomise himself falling on a pencil the wrong way. No, it's something else. It was being packaged." He was turning the anbaron beam off and venting the vacuum chamber now. They might just get out of here before anyone got another shouting-at.

"That's something else I don't understand," said John. "Whoever killed the bloke in the lab, why didn't they take all that stuff? Didn't they kill him for it, or because of it? Why did they leave it behind?"

Sherlock said, "Because the killer never left the lab. That man committed suicide."

Under his hand, John felt his dæmon butting her warm head, seeking comfort. Dæmons, almost uniformly, did not like talk of suicide. To a dæmon, a suicide was a murder-suicide; a regular murder was a double murder. One reason so many people in law enforcement had dog dæmons was not just the old stereotype of the 'servant', public or otherwise. It was also the most resilient personalities that tended to have dogs - they were the ones best able to withstand repeated exposure to bleak realities and still come back to center. John had seen it again and again, in med school, in war, and since. 'Dogs come home'.

But they still didn't have to like the bleak realities - For a human to willingly kill their own dæmon - it was unimaginably cruel. How bad could it be that one could withstand the tearful begging of their own spirit not to put them out?

"John," said Feren, and John shook himself all over as though he were the dog. Focus. Case.

"But why would he have…"

"John, I can _smell something,"_ Ferendala said sharply.

"What's that, love?" absent with inattention, just the way Sherlock had been.

And then he realised. Sherlock was opening the vacuum chamber to take the sample out. John jolted with terror. Was it _still_ inert, after another _bombardment_ by an even _more_ powerful anbaron beam…?

He  leapt up and back and away from the seat in front of the microscope, pulling Feren back with him as she whined and struggled to get free.

"Sherlock!" John shouted. _"Help me!"_

Sherlock turned toward them, but it was Sherlock's dæmon who sprang to assist. Vyarosse changed mid-leap into a bear, blocking and hugging the whining wolfhound as John backed towards the laboratory door.

Sherlock's dæmon was not only touching John's, but also John himself. John was forcibly included in the bear hug and despite the adrenaline and fright of the moment, the touch all over him registered as _sunshine and light breeze_ and everything was confusing enough.

John found himself swearing, almost babbling swear words as he wrestled his dæmon away from the poison that called her so strongly. "Goddamn it, god damn, stupid, how the fuck did I not, Vyarosse that's enough - "

And John fell to the floor on top of Ferendala as the door to the lab clicked shut, sealing them out and away from the cold Dust.

John scrambled to his feet, looked in through the glass pane at Sherlock and Vyarosse, who changed back into a cat and jumped up on the worktop beside the microscope, obviously not affected by the stuff at all.

It took long minutes for him and Feren both to calm down. At his urging she came away with him and they walked briskly around the floor, up some stairs, around another floor, saying nothing, but the whole time his hand was on the bright fur of her back. Her tail was drooping. She radiated misery.

At last she said to John, "I thought I would be able to resist it. Vyarosse doesn't feel the pull of it at all - why not? It's so bad, John. I want it even now," trembling.

He had to stop and hug her again, but he didn't mind, he needed it himself.

"Vyarosse isn't settled," he said. "That's the one difference between him and all the affected dæmons. For some reason, whatever makes them different also makes them immune."

Ferendala finally stopped trembling, and then she said, her voice low and subdued, "I never thought he'd put us in danger like that."

John wished, in vain, that she hadn't said that aloud, but of course, it was what both of them were thinking. For Sherlock to put John in danger was something they accepted. They welcomed it. But this was John's _dæmon_ and somehow... somehow that was different, very different, Just Was.

He'd never been this angry at Sherlock before. He didn't know what to do with it. The whole business with the ASBO had been nothing in comparison, and John had been sparks-snappingly _furious_ about the goddamned ASBO.

This was different. Sherlock had let them down.

"He did jump to save us," she pointed out then.

"His dæmon did. I think Vyarosse likes me better than Sherlock does."

"Now why would you say that?" She turned to look into his face. "Seriously, John. Come on now. You and I are one, aren't we?"

"Of course," and at once he put his arms around her furry neck, and comfort sang between them in a loop. They both needed it.

"Sherlock and Vyarosse are one, too. And I think it was just a mistake. They get excited, you know how it is, they focus like hawks stooping on their prey, they can't see anything else. He said it was safe and he was _wrong_. But they jumped to save us and they did save us. That bear was enormous! I think it was bigger than the tiger that time."

"Hell of a thing to get wrong," John muttered, but he was already appeased and she knew it. There was almost nothing Sherlock could do that they could not somehow rationalise.

"Let's go and find them," she wagged her tail, puppyish - after checking to be sure it was safe to do so. It was.

Sherlock and Molly stopped talking when John and Feren went in. Sherlock's gaze on John was brief and intense, a spotlight with a turquoise gel. Vyarosse was a second raven next to Molly's Zirion, almost alike but for the eyes. John could tell Vyarosse anywhere, no matter what he was.

It was clear from Molly's dæmon that it was safe in here now, the sample contained, and when John approached Sherlock he said, looking away, "John I apologise."

"You what?" said John, just because he couldn't resist.

"I said I apologise. I endangered you and Ferendala. I was not - "

"Thinking?" said John.

"I am always thinking. But I was wrong about your safety, _Ferendala's_ safety." Directly to Feren, "I am sorry."

Feren did not wag her tail, but she gave a doggy smile, mostly with eyebrows.

"That'll do," she said, "Relax now, John. I'm satisfied."

John looked at the two raven dæmons and thought, _Molly put him up to that._ Really, it couldn't have been clearer. Or her dæmon did, but of course as with everyone they were the same thing -

It struck him then, an awful glimmering of what it all might be for.

Given the little bags - controlled dosage - what happened to Anderson was not what was supposed to happen. You weren't supposed to let your dæmon gorge on it. Instead you gave them a little -

And of course they would immediately want more - need more - beg for more. And what could their human half do?

"This is meant to control people," John said slowly. "Enslave them, even, maybe. By addicting their dæmons."


	6. Disappointing To Be Wrong

Sherlock and Molly both turned to look at John.

Molly's expression was horrified; Sherlock's was excited.

"Clever John," he said.

"But," said Molly, "but, 'enslave'? I mean… in this day and age…?"

"Sexual slavery," said Sherlock calmly. "Most certainly. Or blackmail of any type you could name. Financial, political, whatever you like. What better way to ensure your victims can't even try to run. After a little while, they wouldn't even be able to think of it. It's positively a new breakthrough in human trafficking, at the very least."

John and Molly looked at one another, appalled.

Vyarosse, still a raven, launched into the air, startling John and Molly, and landed on Sherlock's shoulder. On contact, he changed back into a cat, and flowed down Sherlock's shoulder till Sherlock held him cradled in one arm.

He didn't show it on his face, but even Sherlock needed to hug his dæmon just then, John could not help but notice. Vyarosse's face was turned in, and Sherlock's face couldn't be seen either as he bent his head down over the cat.

Armed at last with the right size and type of files on the memory stick, they were able to return to the print shop after all. The shop had been about to close, but Sherlock rearranged his face into befuddled sweetness and pleading, and his dæmon into a harmless, sweet little squirrel. A _squirrel!_ John wanted to make a face, but of course Sherlock had deduced his target completely and soon the big printer, which had been turned off for the night, was warming up once more.

When the shop boy saw the pictures on his screen he gawked, and his own chipmunk dæmon leaned this way and that out of his apron pocket, trying to get a better look.

"What is that, are you an artist? Computer graphics? I thought you must be an artist."

"Yes. I am an artist," Sherlock said, and John thought about the title of his website. The Art of Deductive Science. And he just nodded.

"But this is not my work." Sherlock had invited himself behind the counter and was looking at the first print as it came off the big printer and lay slightly curling on the basket tray.

"Oh," the boy was disappointed, for he'd clearly wanted to praise Sherlock and now he could only praise the pictures. "Nice though. Nice effect. How is it done?"

Two more prints were out of the machine now, and Sherlock picked up one after the other by their corners, his pale eyes skidding over the interlocked whorls of the images.

"It's complicated," he said. "Come, John. We're going. I find the rumbling of your stomach quite distracting."

John still had to linger behind to pay, of course, and so Sherlock got home to Baker Street long before he did.

On the way, John met Mycroft.

Knowing who Mycroft was did not really make his method of approach one iota less creepy or jarring. In fact, the little bits John had gleaned about his flatmate's brother made him seem more threatening than less.

Still, the black car was comfortable, and there was more than enough room for a big dæmon to sit in comfort.

"John. Ferendala," said Mycroft, impeccably courteous, and John nodded to him and his Hyryne, just on the near side of rudeness. The blue serpent dæmon was, for the first time that John had ever seen him, not touching Mycroft but sitting beside him on the seat.

He was so pretty he scarcely seemed to be real. Some people's dæmons could really surprise you, John reflected. This was probably why Hyryne was usually hidden from casual view. Whatever this sort of serpent was called in the natural world, his dæmon's choice of settling in its form said a lot about Mycroft. It was doubtless a crafty creature with extremely potent venom.

"And how are relations with my brother?" asked Mycroft, and John flushed hot at once at the insinuation in his words and tone.

"That's a nice choice of word, Mycroft," John said tightly. "Not that it's any of your damned business, but there are no - _relations_ with your brother."

"And yet you are sleeping together on a regular basis."

"How in the fuck do you know that??" He knew how. Mycroft knew things in the same way Sherlock did: he observed with uncanny ability. But Mycroft also had other means at his disposal for _observation_.

"How do I know anything?" said Mycroft pleasantly, uncannily echoing John's thoughts. "And you've just corroborated it."

Damn. He liked that when _Sherlock_ did it. When Mycroft did it, it was like someone rummaging through your clothes. While you were wearing them.

"I wanted to say that I hope you know what you are doing," said Mycroft, "but it is obvious to me that you don't. I hope you will tread very, very carefully, John. My brother - "

Just then, both John's and Mycroft's phones chimed as they received a text at the same time. Whatever Sherlock had texted to Mycroft caused him to make a sourer face than usual. What he'd texted to John was,

**Ignore him. Come home. SH**

Once at home - Mycroft had dropped him not at his door but two streets down, at John's request, because they always, always needed milk - John found space in the fridge for the milk alongside the pickled pig fœtuses and turned towards the sitting room.

Before he could open his mouth to speak Sherlock said, "Mycroft was doubtless trying to frighten you about how fragile I am, or some such nonsense."

"How would he even know we're - we've been - " he stumbles over saying it, even though it's perfectly, factually true. "Sleeping together?"

"By your dæmon, of course," said Sherlock, and Vyarosse nodded in agreement.

John could only shake his head. There were things you could tell from people's dæmons - but not at a glance. Not like that.

"You said - back at the lab - that you saw now how it's done."

Sherlock and Vyarosse glanced at one another.

"You won't like it," said Vyarosse.

"It isn't - nice," said Sherlock, and then he looked embarrassed to have said such a thing. It was a very strange thing for him to say.

John frowned, and Feren went quite still.

"What do you mean, it isn't nice?"

"He means that it's ugly," said Feren. She looked as though she wished to escape, run outside, get away from this conversation. But they had to have it. What choice did they have? John had his hand on her back, but it didn't soothe either of them. They were like frightened children holding hands.

"We mean that you will wish we hadn't told you," said Sherlock, "and yet you have to know, John, it's obviously essential."

"I understand," said John tightly, though he didn't, he couldn't, not until it was too late.

Then, Sherlock told him where cold Dust came from.

And after that, John needed a drink.

***

John went to the Swan and Badger, sat down at the bar and didn't even try to let himself think about anything until he'd put down the pint glass empty for the second time. He was existing in a numb, stunned place that did not admit thought, only mechanical action. Ferendala had been leaning against his leg the whole time. Trembling. At last, when he could relax, she could relax, and he kept his hand on her head as she sat beside his bar stool.

She was a dæmon. She was Ferendala, his own beloved, his one and only spirit, but she was also a construct of conscious matter. Dust.

Lestrade had mentioned it - how beautiful it was when someone died and their dæmon dispersed. It was the subject of gothic poetry and figured prominently in one of the Marlowe plays that everyone studied in school. The one with the king's dæmon confined in the cloven pine. What was it called…

Feren nudged him. "We should go home," she said, but he shook his head and signalled for another pint. He was not numb enough to leave here. Maybe another pint would do it.

A dæmon dispersed when its human died. Into the air. Back out into space in the end, he supposed. No one knew if it rejoined the other Dust in the universe. Some people assumed it did. Some claimed it didn't. Some thought their dæmons  would be waiting for them in heaven.

John didn't think that.

Cold Dust was literally that. The liquid nitrogen -

John drank deeply of his third pint.

Someone was killing people and harvesting their dæmons - murdering their dæmons - cannibalising the remains of dæmons and feeding it to other dæmons -

It was so fucking sick and monstrous, John wanted the whole world to end just to make the very thought of it never exist anymore.

If he drank any more he would be sick. That much was a certainty. He left the remains of the pint on the bar and went home. He felt both guilty and embarrassed to see his own impaired gait wobbling in Feren's long legs as they walked. But they had really, really needed to get out.

Sherlock had been right. It wasn't nice.

The stairs up to the flat seemed infinitely more difficult than that first time, when he still needed the cane. Now it was his heart dragging him down with its sickened weight. Who could even conceive of such a thing - let alone try it - let alone do it - wholesale.

Moriarty crossed John's mind, of course. But it wasn't certain. Clever, maybe, monstrous, yes. But was it his enterprise, or had he been consulting for some other monster?

"John?"

John realised he was standing at the top of the staircase, leaning his head against the doorframe, and Feren leaning on him, so that they seemed to have sagged to a stop there and couldn't go on. That was more or less correct, he supposed dully.

Sherlock's hand was on his shoulder, pulling John forward, guiding him into the sitting room. As he collapsed onto the sofa, John saw Vyarosse change into a lion, crowding himself against John's dæmon and purring. Feren pressed against the greatly enlarged Vyarosse, resting her head on his back.

"Lions don't purr," John told him. He'd seen that on some nature programme.

Vyarosse said, "I am growling very softly."

Sherlock put a mug of tea into John's hand. Sherlock. Had made tea.

John looked at it. It was an object in his hand. It was warm. But it didn't seem to have anything to do with him. Steam rose from the surface and dissipated into the air. Like Dust was supposed to.

"I thought I knew about the worst things in the world," John whispered, watching the tendrils of steam turning into nothing. Turning cold.

"So did I," said Sherlock. "Disappointing to be wrong."

John looked up sharply, drawing in his breath to make an angry reply, but then he saw the expression on Sherlock's face.

He set the tea down rather blindly on the coffee table and reached out to Sherlock. Sherlock sidled closer and dropped down onto the sofa beside John - but not close enough.

"Come here," said John.

Sherlock looked as reluctant as a sullen child, but he swayed a little closer, and John put his arms around him.

That was all he did, and by slow degrees Sherlock seemed to relax. At last he sighed and turned more fully towards John, returning the embrace as though they were lying together in bed. It was awkward, sitting up. But just at this moment, even their dæmons touching wasn't enough for either of them.

John's mind kept shying away from focusing fully on the atrocity that Sherlock had discovered, but kept compulsively returning to it, worrying at it like a wound. Whenever he tried to think about - what it must be like for the poor dæmons - his thoughts jerked back and ricocheted against the inside of his skull, doing damage as they went. Dæmon pain and terror spoke to the deepest, most reptilian parts of the human brain. How could anyone even conceive of -

Ferendala was whining.

"John," Sherlock was saying, and it slowly got through to John that he had said it many times more than once now, "stop. Please, John." Vyarosse's growl/purr had increased a bit in volume.

"What?" Defensive. "Stop what, what did I do?" For a horrible, absurd moment he imagined Mycroft, or Mycroft's people, listening in, recording everything they said in this flat, and wondered what Mycroft would make of that, 'please stop, John.'

"Stop thinking about it."

"How can I?" He didn't say _why did you tell me_ , because he knew that he had _asked_ , that Sherlock did not tell him _until_ he asked, that Sherlock had spared him knowing for a little while, but didn't try to hide the truth. Just what John would have said he wanted. "How can I ever stop thinking about it? Is it Moriarty? Was it Moriarty who did this, _who did this?"_

"We'll find out. I don't know. I don't _know!"_

Sherlock had pulled back enough to look him in the eyes, and his big hands framed John's head. This muffled John's hearing a bit, but Sherlock's voice came through, forceful.

 _"We will find out,_ John. I know you want to take them apart. You will. We'll get them. We'll make sure of it."

It's not just for punishment, he wanted to say, though God knew there needed to be punishment - it has to be stopped, the whole thing has to be stopped - but Sherlock knew that.

They were so close, their faces were so close together, and their dæmons were snuggling together on the hearthrug. And it was so goddamn close to everything he wanted - only now his head was filled with the worst thing he'd ever heard and he couldn't _stand_ it. _Please. Please._

"John," Sherlock said, his voice uncertain. His fingers had parted to allow sound in to John's ears.

"Can I kiss you?" John asked, and knew Sherlock could feel with his hands the glowing heat of embarrassment (and fear) radiating from John's face. His pupils had surely dilated, also.

The embarrassment intensified when Sherlock did not at once respond with a rousing Yes, but looked worried.

"Just that," John said quickly, "nothing more."

Most of the puzzled frown left Sherlock's face, but not quite all. His hands slid slowly down to John's shoulders. "If you want to," he said.

Still not precisely a ringing endorsement of his plan, but John did want to, and so he did. He leaned forward and kissed Sherlock's mouth. Very slowly, and gently at first, expecting Sherlock to startle back in horror or disgust, perhaps. Sherlock held perfectly still, as though still waiting for it to start.

John touched his face, fingertips brushing those cheekbones, which were not truly sharp at all but ingeniously curved, and the warm pliant outer edge of Sherlock's ear, and his hair. All the while he carefully, earnestly courted Sherlock's mouth, also a marvel of human genetic expression.

When John's fingers reached the nape of his neck Sherlock sighed, lips parting for the first time, and a small sound escaped him, and these things together, and the horrific thing he learned today, and the beer, and the many nights of frustration, quite went to John's head. He intensified the kiss faster and farther than he ever intended, moaning hungrily into Sherlock's mouth and seeking his tongue. John's other hand, on Sherlock's chest, rubbed wantonly against the hardened nipple pushing at the silk shirt.

Sherlock was turned on. John felt it. His whole body said so, his hard cock against John's leg was just the exclamation point on the sentence. He was panting, and his hands on John's shoulders were holding, not pushing.

It was gorgeous and so hot and it was going so well and then - between one heartbeat and the next - something went wrong. Something changed.

Sherlock's entire vocabulary of body language seemed to alter, he went slack in John's arms, conscious but blank.

 _Something_ happened with Vyarosse. But John couldn't see. Ferendala jumped up with a yelp, and John froze, pulling back in search of a view of Sherlock's face. His heart was pounding.

"Sherlock?"

"You said just a kiss," Sherlock said, and John could not tell, not even at this close range, whether those ice floe eyes were focussing on him. "You said, nothing more."

"I'm sorry," said John.

He and Feren both pulled away to give space to the others. Her tail was between her legs. If he'd had one, his would be too.

"I'm sorry," John said again. "You're right. I did say that. And I didn't keep my word. I'm - I - I hate people who do things like that. I'm so fucking sorry, Sherlock, I can't even… I don't know what I…"

"It's my fault," said Sherlock, so calmly, so earnestly, his eyes still blank as little mirrors. "It's something about me, about us, we made you do it."

John's mouth fell open. He shook his head, doubting the reality of what he had just heard. _"What…?"_ Could Sherlock actually just have said -  "What, no, what the hell, it was _my_ fault. I'm sorry! I just, it was me, I lost control of myself. Sherlock - I - it will never, never happen again. I - "

"It's fine," Sherlock said, and he unfolded himself from the sofa and turned away towards the desk as though nothing had happened.


	7. Have I Ruined Everything?

But it _wasn't_ fine. And something _had_ happened. And the thing Sherlock had just said made John feel even worse, because where on earth had he got that idea, that anything was his fault?

Vyarosse, a normal-sized cat once more, jumped up on the sofa arm just beside John to stare at him. Feren got up and stood anxiously in front of the fireplace. Her eyes were fixed on Vyarosse's back. Sherlock's blank face stared into the cold anbaric light of his computer. _(John's_ computer.)

John wondered very much what had happened, down there on the floor, when Ferendala yelped. He doubted very much that his dæmon would ever tell him. All he had felt in that moment was surprise and dismay - so, it seemed, had she. But why? Vyarosse could not possibly have tried to bite or scratch her, surely?

He couldn't think straight. Too much beer - too much confusion - too many things to process. Sherlock looked as though he were completely alone in the room, and John was too ashamed of himself to try to bridge the distance between them now.

He just said again, "I'm sorry."

"So you keep saying," remarked Sherlock's dæmon.

That stung, but John deserved that. He turned and went upstairs to his room as though sent there without his supper. Ferendala's steps were slow and heavy.

He closed the door. Didn't lock it. That was normal now. John sat down heavily on his bed and knew that he need not expect Sherlock up here tonight, or possibly _ever again._ And that was John's fault. He shouldn't have asked to kiss at all, at the very least he certainly should have given the idea up when Sherlock hesitated to answer. He had forced himself on Sherlock, it was obvious to John. That was really crystal clear.

So why hadn't Sherlock seen it that way?

Feren jumped up beside him, but laboriously, as though she were already old. His gloom weighed her down. Made him feel worse to see her suffer it.

"What happened down there?" he whispered to her as they leaned against one another, effectively holding one another up. "I kissed him - and I went too far - and he went still and I heard you - "

"Vyarosse changed," she whispered.

"Into what?"

She hesitated. John knew this must be some dæmon secret, the way she had to weigh it out, whether or not to speak.

"A mouse," she said at last. "A tiny black mouse with little black eyes."

But Vyarosse was always tawny brown, (with rare, deliberate exceptions, like the raven or the tiger) and his eyes were like Sherlock's eyes, no matter what form he took.

"That's - weird," he said.

"You went too far," she said.

John hung his head.

"I know," he said. "I'm a fool. Did I think I could drink like that and then stop with - just - a chaste little kiss? What did I think, that he'd say, 'oh yes John I do want you to kiss and fondle me, I thought you'd never ask'?"

He groaned and then buried his face in his hands. It hurt that she didn't contradict him, but one of them had had to say it.

Feren butted her head against his shoulder. "Please don't lose them," she said. "Don't lose them now. We can't do without them now."

Deep, shuddering breath. Oh, he knew that all right.

Before he slept, John left the door ajar for Vyarosse. But though he lay awake for hours, he fell asleep at last with no sign of a visit.

When he opened his eyes again, it was four in the morning, and Vyarosse was beside him on his pillow. Watching John sleep? Staring him awake?

The moment John's eyes were open, the cat said without preamble, "Don't interrupt. Ferendala saw me take a form. She says she told you what it was," with a cold stare in Feren's direction. "You must never mention it to - Sherlock."

The dæmon waited a moment, while John struggled with and ultimately stifled his objections. Vyarosse was unlikely to have misspoken. What John did not understand was, perhaps, going to be explained to him. If he didn't interrupt.

And that was absolutely the first time John had heard Vyarosse call Sherlock by name. Feren said John's all the time - when she wasn't angry with him.

"The relevant memories have been deleted," said the cat dæmon. "To the best of our ability. Some things, however… can't stay deleted if triggered. So: do not mention it. That is all."

John lay there in the dark, never having said a word, as Vyarosse jumped down and went out of the room and down the stairs. Back to Sherlock, John supposed.

Ferendala rose from the rug on the floor and, without saying a word, jumped up on to the bed and let John put his arms around her neck. They both needed to comfort one another now, because with a few terse words, Vyarosse had managed to paint quite an ominous picture.

The dæmon talked about memories that had been deleted. And hadn't he supplied details Sherlock claimed he couldn't be bothered with? At least implied that he'd deleted? The name of Anderson's dæmon. Tia something. Whatever it was. John couldn't remember it now, but the point was that Vyarosse could.

And Vyarosse kept, or implied that he kept, secrets from Sherlock.

And there was the remark about things being 'triggered'.

A tiny black mouse. What could be less like Sherlock? Yes, his dæmon took small forms, even insects, when the need arose, generally for the purpose of breaking and entering, but this form had suddenly appeared just as Sherlock was -

being trespassed on.

John was a doctor. He worked, these days, in a surgery that saw plenty of children, and there was a checklist of things to watch out for, telltales of abuse at home or school or church. In children on the verge of puberty, the age of settling, one such telltale was a dæmon settled into a hiding form. It was an instinct, a child's instinct to hide from bad things. But sometimes bad things happened anyway. A child with a suddenly settled dæmon in the form of a ladybird, say, or a chameleon or -

\- a mouse -

should be discreetly observed for other telltales of sexual abuse.

Forced settling was monstrous. Abuse of children always was, of course, but this in particular, this singular, precious time when awakening and identity were everything - the predators who specialised in shattering this fragile innocence were the sickest of the sick.

And this, John was to understand, had been done to Sherlock.

And his dæmon had unsettled afterwards, not as a result of brain injury or some - rare organic deformity but - by Sherlock deleting the memories.

Deleting them, or giving them to his dæmon to hold.

John pressed his face into the fur at Ferendala's neck and tried, tried so hard to clear his mind of the chaos that kept forming, the thought that he'd done something to trigger memories of what must have been - trauma. Bad enough to think that he'd simply offended his best friend, his partner, his - there weren't words for all the things Sherlock was. But he was not a lover and John had been wrong, so wrong to try to treat him as one. Yes, he'd asked to kiss, and got permission, barely - but John had taken that permission and trampled right over it.

_He trusted me. He never will again, will he?_

In the morning, when he went out to get milk and the newspapers, he was not at all surprised to find Mycroft's car waiting for him in the street again. John got into the car and said nothing, staring down at his hands, just waiting for whatever Mycroft might unleash on him now. Ferendala sat watchful beside him.

Instead Mycroft said, "I was there."

John looked up, startled. Before he could speak Mycroft added gently, "I stopped the one who did it. But I was too late, for Sherlock."

"Stopped?"

"Yes," and there was definitely some of the serpent in the human part of Mycroft just then. It took all John had not to show the cold shiver that went down his back. "Stopped. Sherlock was unconscious. Vyarosse was hiding under the bed. Settled. A mouse. _My brother."_

And John knew just what he meant. There was nothing wrong with having a mouse dæmon - if it suited your nature to have one. It did not suit Sherlock's.

 _A mouse, a little mouse, black to hide away in the deep dark shadows under the bed, and they'll never find us,_ yes, even a genius child would think that way in a panic. In fear. In pain.

Then Hyryne spoke for the first time in John's hearing. His voice was breathy. "Your sin is incredibly minor in comparison."

"There is just something a little too precious about a serpent talking about sin," said John, his instinct to snark at Mycroft momentarily re-engaged.

"Yes," said the dæmon. He sounded amused. "Exactly so."

"But it's for Sherlock to say, how minor it was," John went on, and did not even bother adding 'however the fuck you two even know about my so-called _minor sin'._

"I thought you could do with some information," Mycroft said smoothly. "Here, take these." He handed John a bag: it contained milk and newspapers. The car had never pulled away from where it had been sitting.

John took them, gave an awkward little nod that may or may not have been thanks, and he and Feren got out of Mycroft's car.

Sherlock was scowling at him when he got upstairs to the sitting room.

"He's not even trying to be discreet," Sherlock complained. John watched his face, and did not seem to see any sign of anger or offense or betrayal lingering from last night. He did not look blank anymore, that was the most reassuring thing. Vyarosse was a cat as he most often was. "As though I don't know the sound of his car doors. As though I can't glance out of the window and see his big stupid shiny _roof_ down there." He had his violin in his hands, was lifting it to his chin to play. "He's an unbearable show-off." Sherlock went on to render this pronouncement ironic by playing as loud and fast as possible for the next two and a half hours.

There had been no more information on the cold Dust case yet, at least that John knew of. He'd told Lestrade where it came from. John thought he should be the one to tell him, though he used almost exactly the same words Sherlock had used to explain it to him. Suddenly the disappearances, the thefts of liquid nitrogen, all sorts of anomalies were called into question.

John could barely bring himself to think about it directly, though he knew he must. He would become desensitised, surely, to the horror of it, and be able to be helpful to Sherlock in tracking down the culprit, in putting a stop to the whole thing.

He said this to himself, as he had said to himself in battle overseas. He would get used to it eventually, it would get easier, he had told himself so many times. He never did, and it never did. And this, this sure as hell wouldn't. Never. Not so long as John was alive to _have_ a dæmon.

He put the milk away and put the papers on the table and made tea. Sherlock kept on sawing away at his violin, and John had learned to tune this out at least, the way people who lived alongside rail lines stopped hearing trains after a while. He read through all of the papers, showing himself normal and calm and predictable to Sherlock, whom John could feel watching him as he read. John endured it and kept turning the pages, looking for any little hint that might float up to his eye.

Mycroft had actually been - encouraging. Hadn't he? His dæmon definitely had. His dæmon had reassured John. And there had been no threats, either. Veiled or otherwise. Nothing that smacked even slightly of 'never dare to touch my brother'.

Sherlock suddenly stopped playing and said, "Are you going to ask Vyarosse about it?"

"What?" John looked up from where he'd got distracted reading an item about dæmon-assisted artwork installations in China.

"Are you going to _ask_. Behind my back."

"We didn't have to," said Feren, getting up to stand beside where John was sitting.

John looked to Vyarosse, his heart suddenly pounding. But hadn't the memories been deleted? So what was Sherlock talking about?

Oh. Of course.

"I'll ask you," John said. "Have I ruined everything?"

Sherlock frowned. It was his _social confusion_ frown, simultaneously puzzled and haughty as he tried to determine whether this was worth his time. "Everything?" he echoed.

"Do you want me to _leave_ , Sherlock. Please don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about last night. What I did. Do you want me to move _out_."

"What?" There was nothing haughty now. This was panic. "What? No! Why would you?" Sherlock put the violin down with none of the usual care, the jangled noise it made matched what John's nerves were doing. Feren flinched slightly at the sound.

"If that was what you wanted. I would. I won't let it happen again, but I don't see how you could possibly trust that. So I'd. I'd understand," fighting with his throat not to let it close. "If you'd rather I left."

Sherlock stood up very straight. His eyes were blazing from his pale face in a way that made him look feverish.

"Are you _blackmailing_ me, John Watson," he said, "are you really?"

"Wait a minute - WHAT? What the hell are you even - "

"You are threatening to move out - "

"Not threatening, offering - "

"- if I don't have sex with you."

John rocked back as though he had been slapped.

"That is not true," he said, breathless with pain. "That's not _true_. Sherlock. Oh my God, Sherlock, how can you be this wrong about anything?"

"You want to have sex with me."

John felt a throbbing in his temples, thought about Mycroft's electronic ears again. "I can't deny it. But - I know you don't want to. I get that."

"What do you 'get'?"

_Careful, John._

"I get that it's not something you want. It's a transport thing, right? Like food, but unlike food, you can do without if you choose." He was pretty sure it wasn't dysfunction - not going by that brief response that had made John lose his self control.

Oh no. No. It didn't _make_ him. How could he let himself fall into that trap? It _wasn't Sherlock's fault._ John had initiated every phase of last night's disaster, from beginning to end. It was _John's_ fault.

"Ye-e-s…" Sherlock said slowly, eyes narrowed.

"I understand that I can never get what I want," John said. "You don't want the same, and that's all there is to it." What else could he say? Given what he had learned this couldn't possibly be negotiable.

Sherlock did not reply.

"I don't _want_ to move out," John said, since it seemed that the obvious had better be stated. "I don't ever want that. But I thought you might want us to. Because of the way I treated you. Which was wrong and - I'm sorry. That's all. Understand?"

Still no answer, but a flicker of the eyelids.

John got up from his chair and turned away towards the stairs before turning back.

"And I would never. Never. _Blackmail_ you. For fuck's sake, Sherlock, I suppose I deserve you thinking that of me, but still."

Upstairs, Feren put her head in John's lap as he sat on the edge of his neatly made bed. "I wish things could go back to the way they were before," she said wistfully.

"Me, too, love," John said, stroking her ears, trying and failing to comfort them both.

Vyarosse visited again that night.

"He was expecting a different question," he told John.

"But you said he didn't remember - "

"He was expecting you to ask if he would still come in to sleep with you in your bed."

"I - assumed he wouldn't. That he wouldn't want to. Does he?" Of course, he was asking the dæmon, and the dæmon was already here. Demonstrably, at least part of Sherlock wanted to be here.

"We were... hoping things could go back to the way they were before," said the cat, looking embarrassed. "As far as possible. If you can - "

"Control myself, yeah." John's mouth was dry. He had not imagined that Sherlock could miss the sleeping arrangements as much as John already did, that he would ever allow the closeness again. John had proved himself a wolf rather than a wolfhound, at least for a moment - and that had been enough. It should have been a dealbreaker, shouldn't it?

But Sherlock had referred to John's leaving as though it were a threat to him, not a relief.

"I want that," John said. "Should I go down and ask him? Or is that too…" He didn't know how to finish the sentence. Threatening? Forward? Weird?

"Not necessary," Vyarosse said. "He'll come back up when he feels like it."

He settled down on John's bed, clearly intending to stay. He never asked, of course. He was very much like a real cat in that way.

John wondered if this cat form were what Sherlock's dæmon would have settled as if he'd been allowed to do it naturally, or if it was just a useful default. A cat, not a mouse.

John thought with a pang about the lion and the tiger and the bear that were each so much more apt a match for Sherlock's magnificent spirit than a mouse.

He thought about the pain in Mycroft's voice when he'd said, _My brother._

Could this be the heart of Sherlock's resentment of Mycroft, John wondered? Even if Sherlock did not directly remember?

"Is there anything else I should know?" he asked Vyarosse. "Anything else that might - trigger memories? I don't want to do anything else to remind him of the man that - "

"Woman," said Vyarosse in a bored tone.

This brought John up short.

"Of course you assume a man. Statistically more likely. But there it is. She was a friend of Mummy's. We had to call her 'Aunt'. Her dæmon was a swan." At odds with the boredom in the dæmon's tone was the lashing of his tail. "You know how real swans are? They look so lovely and placid but up close they're mean and hideously strong. Their wings can beat you senseless."

"Yes," said Ferendala, when the silence started to stretch on too long.

"That's what she and her dæmon were like. I tried - to change to something strong, something big - but her dæmon held me down with his horrible wings and crushed me against the pillow. I got away as a mouse - under the bed - and then I was too frightened to help, I hid there till Hyryne found me."

John listened, transfixed in horror.

It didn't change anything, that the monster had been a woman. If it made it seem more awful to John - that was his own bias towards the softness of women. He knew they could be hard too.

"Swans are bad, to answer your question," said Vyarosse, and the speed at which his tail was moving now would have telegraphed imminent attack, if he were a real cat. His ears were laid back flat on his tawny head. "And the smoke. She'd brought a sort of censer that made smoke, it smelled sweet and made me sick. It… made it harder for me to change, to fight. We smelled it again just for a moment when we were in Chinatown. I assume it was opium. _That's_ bad."

'Bad' meant 'trigger' to Vyarosse. And he was only relating his own experience - not Sherlock's. Vyarosse had been under the bed. Sherlock had been on it.

And Mycroft had said he _stopped_ this woman. "Did Mycroft kill her?"

No hesitation. "Yes. I didn't get to see. Hyryne stayed with me under the bed until it was over."

Thank God for Mycroft Holmes, thought John. Too late he might have been, but not too merciful.

"Did Sherlock see?" He couldn't quite bring himself to ask how she was killed.

"I don't know."

"God almighty," said John, and he sagged, rubbing his hands over his eyes. What a world. What a miserable pile of shit of a world, sometimes. For every good in it there seemed a hundred wretched pointless evils, destructive and cruel.

Feren jumped up to sit beside John, and licked his hands till he pulled them down. He looked up at her, then over at Vyarosse. The speed of the tail had abated somewhat, but it was by no means still.

"Are you all right?" he asked Sherlock's dæmon. Remembering the names of annoying people's dæmons was one thing. This was another order of magnitude entirely. Did Vyarosse know about the solar system too? "Can you handle this, carrying this for him, all by yourself?"

"I'm not now," said the cat. "Now you know everything I know. The two of you have to carry it with me, if you love him." There was something both offensively selfish and sweetly protective about the tone of his voice, and John could not help loving him for it. It was so Sherlock. He was so Sherlock.

"You know we do," said Feren. "We'll do everything we can." She shot John a look that said, _And not do anything we mustn't._

Sherlock did not come upstairs that night, or that week. And that was all right with John even though he missed him as a bedmate, because thinking about what Vyarosse had told him and Ferendala took time to process, the way the truth about cold Dust had done. Was still doing, in fact. Horrors took time to sink in.

He longed for Sherlock in his arms at night, and lectured himself many times with stern resolve about how he must not make that mistake, not ever again. Not getting pissed was likely a good start. Maybe not drinking at all. John would have to be on guard against himself.

He really was damned lucky, he felt, that Sherlock had not wanted him out of the flat instantly after his lapse. That Sherlock had not detached from him entirely, from their association, from the history they already had - John was luckier than he thought he could possibly be. He'd thought he had used up his good luck surviving the bullet. Walking through Russell Square that day. Meeting Sherlock Holmes. For the rest, he had thought, he must surely be on his own.

But his luck held out just a bit longer. His lapse was forgiven. And Sherlock did return to John's bed. He crept in while John was having a nightmare about Moriarty, and John woke to confusing, complicated warmth: sharing his bed, which was a touch too small for two grown men.

Perhaps, at some point, they might just use Sherlock's room, John thought drowsily, waking again to a very pointy elbow. But no need to push. It could wait.


	8. I Want You To Focus

* * *

 

The list of disappearances now believed to be associated with cold Dust began to grow. Once it was understood that there was, generally, a practical size limit of dæmon that could be easily… processed… in standard sized dewars of liquid nitrogen… patterns emerged. But there were many false positives. John had had the most awful feeling one day when he remembered the barista with the little rabbit dæmon. He knew where her phone number had gone, but where had she gone? He didn't even know her name. Thank God he did spot her again, working in a pastry shop. The relief was so great John never even glanced at her generous display of cleavage. She and her dæmon were alive and unhurt. At least someone was.

Knowing what had happened to Sherlock didn't make it any easier to sleep with Sherlock in his bed. Feeling ashamed of himself did not make it any easier to stifle the desire John felt. Either the desire was so much stronger than the shame, or the desire was fuelled by the shame - which seemed so much worse.

Sherlock was in no way a child, nothing like a child. But his dæmon had been able to maintain his childlike state for many years now. How old would Sherlock have been? Anywhere from nine to thirteen was considered normal for natural settling. It still made John feel sick and sad to even _need_ a phrase to differentiate natural settling from - the other kind.

He could hardly even think about it, but it was on his mind all the time. It stunned him over and over with the fact of itself, when he saw Vyarosse change. And then he would feel guilty for reacting this way at all, as though he were borrowing hurt. And yet he felt it. He felt the same fierce desire to protect Sherlock, to kill for Sherlock, but he could not travel in time in order to do it. If he could travel in time, he would get there before Mycroft. He would get there before it was too late.

Between them, Sherlock and Vyarosse had been able to do the impossible. By deleting the memory they were able to do their own little substitution for time travel. A little nip, a little tuck. They made it so it never happened.

But it did happen. Vyarosse remembered it.

Could they maintain this balance indefinitely?

Perhaps they could have, before John came along. Perhaps they could, if John could suppress desire for the rest of his life. Would he have permission, if he needed it, to seek elsewhere for sex? Would phone numbers cease to disappear from John's pockets? Perhaps. But he couldn't bear to ask. He couldn't bear to think about it for more than a minute. Feren was right. He didn't want just anyone. He wanted Sherlock.

He did his best to adapt. He had preferred the bed all his life, but he learned to masturbate in the shower with the bathroom door firmly locked. At times like these he let himself imagine instead of remember. He thought about what he'd hoped would happen that night, when Sherlock kindled under his touch and his kiss. He'd hoped to get a glimpse of that face in desire, what his eyes looked like when he was panting. He'd wanted to unbutton that silk shirt and pluck at Sherlock's nipples with his lips.

Past that, he scarcely knew what else he had wanted, but the thought was usually more than enough to make him come.

But soon enough his imagination led him on further. Always, his fantasy started at the same place, at the same time, with the same kiss, a kiss that did not go wrong but… yes, unbutton his shirt, yes, his nipples, smaller than John is used to dealing with but responsive in just the same way to kissing and licking, and his face, yes, his eyes, and perhaps he could not speak already, or perhaps he just said, "John," low and breathy and wonderful.

John pumped his cock into his fist and knew damn well that either Sherlock knew what he was doing right at this minute, or else he would deduce it the moment John walked out of the bathroom. So it didn't matter, did it? This was how he behaved himself, this was what made it possible to lie entwined with that body, to breathe in his scent, and to do… Nothing.

But there wasn't enough masturbation in the world to make it easy.

...Perhaps he just said, "John," in that voice that thrilled John all over his skin, and then John could, perhaps, slide one hand down and down Sherlock's flat, warm, possibly ticklish belly (Sherlock was definitely ticklish somewhere, but the exact location had not been confirmed). Into his trousers. Rubbing his palm roughly over the erect cock trapped in his pants.

But what would he sound like when he moaned? That John did not know. That was where his imagination fell down. And he'd never know, would he?

When he came he almost sobbed with the relief of it. It was hard to stay on his feet in the shower at such a moment. That was why he liked it better in the bed. But he shared his bed with Sherlock and for all Vyarosse's curiosity on the subject, it just felt like a transgression.

Anderson was still in a coma after thirteen days. Lestrade mentioned it quietly when they stopped by at a crime scene. Donovan stood off by herself. She seemed - grey, somehow. Her shepherd dæmon leaned against her leg, looking completely out of it.

"And how's his dæmon?" asked John.

"Sleeping now too."

"Hm." In one way that could have been a good sign. It was normal for the dæmon to sleep when the human slept. There were several known conditions where this was not the case, and of course there was mesmeresis, when the dæmon was awake while the human was asleep. In the previous phase of his coma, Anderson and his dæmon - Tialerel, that was the name - had shown the opposite symptom. But his dæmon had been effectively mad, uncontrolled and whining, either for Anderson or the cold Dust, John could not guess.

Ferendala went over to Donovan and her dæmon. John was a few seconds late to realise what she was doing, and started after her. Donovan could scarcely seem to control herself at the best of times, and these were definitely not the best of times.

He did feel sympathy towards Donovan, for all her past nastiness, and as Feren approached the German shepherd (John had never learned his name to forget it), John felt more caution than Feren showed. It might have been that he had seen real German shepherds that were frightening brutes, when he was a boy, and it might just have been Donovan being Donovan, but her dæmon had always made John just a little nervous, as though he might really bite. He didn't even bark, as far as John knew: Donovan did that all herself.

For an instant John thought Donovan's dæmon actually _was_ about to bite, when he lurched towards Feren, but he only butted his head into her side. Without any more warning than this, Donovan seized the front of John's jacket and sagged onto his shoulder. It was not quite a hug, but it might as well have been a full-body tackle. John froze in astonished embarrassment.

"You need," Donovan said, and her voice was distorted because she was crying, "you need to get your bloody great smarty-pants to find out how to fix this." She shook John a little, but so ineffectually he didn't even rock on his feet.

She was a wreck. She couldn't have been sleeping properly - or at all? - since this began. Almost two weeks.

"We'll do everything we can," he told her, and awkwardly patted her shoulder.

"Don't do that," she said, but she sounded a little more normal already.

"Sorry."

"Come, John," Sherlock called to him from where he had remained beside Lestrade. "This isn't worth our time. We have a case to pursue. Turn him loose, Donovan, he's not available."

Donovan's dæmon growled, but not till Ferendala had stepped back. It was clearly aimed at Sherlock.

"What now?" John asked him in the restaurant. He'd forced Sherlock to stop with him and ordered something Sherlock liked, to encourage grazing from John's plate. (It was this, or Sherlock's not eating at all.)

"We wait for the food to arrive, then we are forced to watch you eat it," said Vyarosse, pertly.

"What now, Sherlock," John said evenly. "Have we hit a dead end? We need to pursue this. It's got to be Moriarty. Hasn't it?"

A steaming plate of curry was set down before him, and a plate of naan. John reached for it hungrily.

"I don't know," said Sherlock slowly.

"You said it was 'elegant'," John said, "The cold Dust. Sounds like what you tend to think of _his_ work."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. They looked grey in the light of the restaurant, without a hint of blue.

"I said the _crystalline structure_ was elegant," he said. "I did not know then how it was obtained, but it doesn't change my opinion. You've seen the pictures. The boy at the print shop thought they were works of art."

"Right, cos he's the expert on - "

"John."

"What!"

"If we must be here, at least eat the food, rather than pointlessly destroying it. We could buy bread for you to abuse back at the flat, and I might get some work done."

John looked down at the fragments of naan all over the tablecloth and hunched his shoulders.

"Fine. Fine," he said. "I'm not hungry anymore. Let's go."

They did not speak on the way home, and when they reached the flat Sherlock went up while John went to find Mrs Hudson. He didn't want or need anything particularly with her, but he needed to be in a place that didn't have Sherlock in it, just for a bit. He didn't fancy going out for a pint or two… not after that last time. John's inhibitions were all he had to protect him from disaster, these days. He could not afford to impair them.

Mrs Hudson greeted him warmly enough, but he could tell that she wanted to be watching telly. He sat down with her and quietly watched what she was watching, at her invitation, though he had no interest in dæmon talent shows. He knew that Waldzell had been in one, way back when - there was a trophy on the mantel and a sort of medal on a ribbon which had been matted into a picture frame on the wall in Mrs H's sitting room. And so, she felt free to give John a running commentary on the dæmons and their performances, and what she thought their chances were in the overall contest, and what she thought of the judges. And _their_ dæmons. And what she thought of their chances of being judges next year.

John found it comforting. It was just what he needed. Her voice washed over him without leaving any residue of meaning, and she always signaled what sort of response was appropriate by the tone of her voice. He could supply the "Hm"s and "oh?"s and "no!"s with no thought whatsoever. Her owl dæmon rarely spoke - Emma Hudson was generally so chatty that there was little left for her dæmon to say - but he was very good at humming in harmony whenever a song was on, and his big eyes never turned from the screen.

When the show was finally over - it ran two hours - she turned the volume to Mute and turned to John.

"Are you two fighting, then, dear?"

"No," he said, somewhat resentfully.

"Well, but you can't stand talent shows, and he went straight up and you came straight in here. What's the matter?"

"Even if I wanted to talk about it," said John, "which honestly I don't, I couldn't. It's too - " Private? Secret? Painful? "Confidential." That was true enough. Vyarosse had confided in them.

"I understand," she said, and he wondered if she possibly ever could. "Well. If there's anything I can do…" On her shoulder, Waldzell gave his white-spotted wings a little stretch.

Ferendala nudged John's leg surreptitiously. Mrs Hudson wanted them to go. It was time for her to go on with her evening routine - bath, probably, and then bed. John nodded and stood up.

"Thank you for letting us sit here with you," he said on the way out. "I suppose we are fighting, sort of, a bit, but we'll get it sorted out somehow."

John could hear the shower running as Feren went ahead of him up the stairs to the flat. He could see Vyarosse nowhere, which meant presumably that he was in the bathroom while Sherlock was showering. Normal for most dæmons, unusual for Sherlock and Vyarosse. But not a problem. It spared John having to talk.

John was worn out and though he regretted not having eaten the food at the restaurant, Mrs Hudson had been generous with biscuits during the evening and he could survive till breakfast. Sherlock's shower showed no signs of abating. He did tend to linger in there.

John wondered if Sherlock ever masturbated, and if so did he do it in the shower too? The image displayed itself before his mind's eye like a beautifully photographed film. Long pale limbs gleaming in the steamy air, jeweled with droplets... Dark sparse hair on his body, dark thick hair on his head and at his groin, all weighed down with the water, his head ducked down to look at himself, hard cock in his big hand… maybe with some odd sort of backwards grip on himself, too, because he probably did it so rarely, once a year whether he needed it or not...

"Come on," said Feren, snapping him out of it with just a thread of impatience running through her voice. She was getting tired of these moments of paralysis in John, when he just stood where he was, like now, obsessing. She persisted in refusing to see what the fuss was about. "Bed. We're tired."

"All right, all right." The bickering tone between them was softened by the light caress of his hand down her long back.

They went up to bed. And despite all the things still firing anxiously around in his head, sleep came easily for once. John closed his eyes, took a breath, and already felt himself falling back into warm darkness.

The darkness he woke into was much warmer.

John thought it might be a dream. He thought he might be dreaming when he found Sherlock nuzzling him, Sherlock half on top of him with a thigh between John's legs. His half-conscious mind hoped so much that it _was_ a dream. Dreams had no limits, no guilt… no consequences. All he had to do was enjoy it.

When he finally realised it was real, John reared up in a panic, adrenaline flooding through him and dispersing the warm pleasurable cobwebs in what felt like an instant. "Sherlock," he whispered, thinking that Sherlock must be asleep, he must be doing this in his sleep. "Sherlock, wake up!"

"I'm awake," purred in his ear. "Relax, John."

"Then what are you doing? Stop it, get off of me."

"You don't like this?"

"You know goddamn well I like it, get off!"

His hands were in a pushing-away position on Sherlock's shoulders, but without the least bit of force. He was touching bare skin. Sherlock had pyjama bottoms on, but nothing else. He smelled wonderful, freshly washed, that honey scent in his hair (John had investigated the bottles in the shower more closely and decided the key ingredient must be royal jelly) and his face was just shaved. And he was rubbing up against John like an incubus.

"I thought you didn't do this," John gasped. "I thought you didn't want this." So desperately difficult to think. His cock was long since hard, throbbing through layers of clothes against the pressure of Sherlock's thigh.

"I want what you want."

"No, I really don't think you do."

"You keep assuming that. But you've never even asked me."

This brought John up short. It was true. The one thing he had actually asked for was a kiss. Which he then grossly exceeded decency in claiming.

"What do you want?" John asked, carefully.

"I want you to focus," Sherlock said. "On me."

John laughed a little, ruefully. "Always. Don't you know that?"

"Not lately. You're obsessed with sex, I see it in everything you do, in every expression on your face, and it's distracting. It's distracting _you_. If you need sex then I want you to have it with me. I can't have you this - wound up."

John sighed and sighed until it seemed his lungs had never been emptier.

"Not good, Sherlock," he said quietly. "It doesn't work like that."

"Why doesn't it?"

"Are you actually interested in having sex with me at all? For its own sake?"

"I don't know," Sherlock said, irritation creeping into his tone. "I suppose so. I enjoyed it when you kissed me. I was enjoying _this_ until you started complaining."

"I'm not complaining! I'm trying to be the voice of reason here - oh God I can't _think_ when you're doing that."

This just made Sherlock even more enthusiastic with the motion of his thigh. John groaned, his head falling back.

"I rather like you like this," Sherlock said. "The voice of reason, speechless." There was a smile in his voice that John could hear. It confused him. All of this confused him. After the things Vyarosse said, what was this? How could this be happening?

"I thought - you weren't - weren't interested in sex. Full stop."

"Why, because I was molested as a child?"

This was an icy-cold bucket of water over John. Sherlock was as blunt as a sledgehammer.

"I don't - " He was stuttering, panicked now, what if he said some awful triggering thing? But Vyarosse, assuming he was here in the darkened bedroom, was not helping, not speaking up. John was on his own. "I thought… You - Do, do you remember... something like that?"

"John. I hardly need to be able to remember in order to deduce something so _obvious_. My dæmon and my brother both have tried to protect me by terrifying you. But how could I not know? I'm thirty-four years old and my dæmon isn't settled. It has not escaped my notice. I _routinely_ delete memories. Of course I can fill in the blanks later."

It ought to have occurred to him, John supposed. He ought to have imagined this possibility.

"You don't think that's amazing?" Sherlock asked, wistfully.

"Um. Yes. But." He was paralysed with what he thought was responsibility.

"When it was done, and by whom, these things are trivial. I couldn't help but notice that Aunt Beast had suddenly disappeared, when she was supposed to stay through the holidays."

"Aunt what...?"

"Her name was Beatrice. Mummy made us call her Aunt. She had a son called Arthur. Mycroft and I called them Aunt Beast and Cousin Awful."

John wanted to laugh but he couldn't. He couldn't. He would have, at any other time, if this were any other story.

"I don't know what happened to Arthur, but I am entirely certain that Mycroft is what happened to her. He's been trying to shield me ever since then. As I got older, and it became obvious that my dæmon ought to have settled, there was no remaining doubt about my hypothesis. Vyarosse generally refuses to confirm or deny anything I have deleted."

This was another shocking revelation, to John. Sherlock knew that Vyarosse - ? But wait, of course he did. Vyarosse routinely supplied data such as Anderson's dæmon's name. How could John have missed a thing like that?

"So. You assume because of this that I cannot be interested in sex with you?"

"I'm - no, I - I thought that before I knew anything. You just don't seem to care about things like that except where they have to do with crime."

"But I'm interested in you. And you're interested in sex. Doesn't it just make sense?"

"But do you even want - "

"I told you already, I want what you want. I know you want me - "

"But I want you to want it for yourself."

There was a little pause, and then Sherlock said, "I don't know how to do that."

Of course. Of course he didn't.

"I don't think I can just _do_ that," John said slowly. "What I want isn't - one-sided. I would feel as though - " It was not okay to finish the thought - as though he were _taking advantage._

Sherlock sighed with what sounded like long suffering annoyance (a sigh he had surely picked up listening to John) and rolled off. John felt a bit as though he might have been squashed down into the surface of the mattress. Impacted.

"Can't we just - go on as we are?" said John, and wondered if that were even possible.

"You think I'm broken," said Sherlock.

"No, I don't," said John at once, the loyal response, but in a way it was a little bit true. The word _broken_ was harsh and unfair, but the sentiment expressed was not so far off the mark. Even _damaged_ was too impersonal. And wrong. John thought Sherlock was _injured_. John didn't ever want to know exactly what those suppressed memories contained. Vyarosse's side of it had been terrible enough. More than terrible enough.

Silence and darkness stretched out together. John finally said, "It didn't go well before, Sherlock. I know you weren't expecting it but - "

"You are worrying needlessly."

"Suppose - suppose he settles again," meaning Vyarosse of course. "Suppose that did you both harm? You know how - the older kids are, the harder it is for them. At this age who knows what - "

"Oh John, _stop_." Sherlock sat up. Surely he was about to get up, out of bed, go downstairs. John bit his lip to stop himself talking. It might be better to let him go.

From the floor Ferendala said clearly, "We're afraid of hurting you. Not of just hurting your feelings like we're doing now, but really, really _hurting_ you. You scared us before."

"That's always a possibility," Vyarosse said. "Hurting us. Scaring you. We know that." It was the first time the dæmon had spoken in all this time. John wondered what form he was in, in the dark.

John put a careful, tentative hand on Sherlock's back. In the darkness he'd forgotten for a moment that Sherlock hadn't got a shirt on and it was a bit of a shock, touching his skin.

Sherlock did not flinch, but John did. His fingertips bounced back off the warm smooth flesh, then landed again carefully, relaxing, his palm making contact. Sherlock breathed, in and out, and for a moment it was absurd, John felt as though he should have a stethoscope. He sat up, following the thought at least symbolically, and leant his head against Sherlock's back, listening to the heartbeat beneath his cheek.

Just a heartbeat. How many had he heard? But this one was so _important_.

"We'll find a way to deal with this," John said, and he was thinking of his own sexual frustration; he meant that he would get used to it sooner or later, that he would find some vague compromise.

"Never mind that," said Sherlock, twisting around, "kiss me now."

This, now, was a request John could handle. And it was Sherlock's own request this time, at that. The only hesitation in fulfilling it was figuring out, in the dark, who should turn and who should hold still. They both turned. It was confusing. How he ended up on top of Sherlock, he was not sure. In fact, they ended in the opposite position to that in which he had wakened: his thigh between Sherlock's - though to be fair, he wasn't grinding, he just needed somewhere for his knee to rest.

Kissing in the dark, however innocent, didn't feel at all innocent. Sherlock certainly didn't seem to have deleted their kiss. They seemed to be continuing it exactly where they'd left off. When John tried to lift up a bit so as not to press down on Sherlock, Sherlock's long arms wrapped him close, settling the silent argument at once.

He couldn't stop himself getting erect again. John could no longer restrain his response than he could suddenly learn to fly. But it didn't mean he had to do anything about it. Sherlock's breathing was faster now, his heartbeat accelerated, but was this enjoyment or trauma? Without being able to see Sherlock's dæmon, how could John possibly be sure?

So when it seemed possible, he pulled Sherlock over a bit so that neither of them was on top: they lay on their sides, facing one another. And that was nice in its own way, to touch Sherlock's back while kissing him, rubbing his hands up and down in an improvised massage.

Sherlock pushed back, and John instinctively froze. Had he done something…? But it seemed he only wanted enough space between them to reach down, deftly pluck John's T-shirt up, and then slide his hand, palm down, right into John's pyjama bottoms.

It was as swift and as brazen as cat burglary and John's cock was engulfed in Sherlock's big warm hand before he could even gasp.

"Jesus, Sherlock - " hands on his shoulders again, gripping hard but neither pushing nor pulling.

He could feel Sherlock's breath on his forehead. The rustle of cloth, their rapid breathing. Vyarosse purring, so close he must be on the bed somewhere, damn him.

Sherlock's grip on him seemed so tentative that John actually asked him, "Do you - even masturbate?" There couldn't have possibly been a ruder question in the universe, but Sherlock was like an artist who worked in rude questions, and he appreciated John's work. He chuckled.

"Yes, of course I do. I did this evening, in the shower. I wanted to be able to focus properly on you."

Oh God. John pondered that, and his hips rocked forward hard as he instinctively sought more pressure from the hand invading his pyjamas.

"What - do you think about? When you masturbate." Since rude questions were okay.

Sherlock snorted. "What do you think about while _moving your bowels?_ I think about whatever I happen to be thinking about."

"Sex talk isn't your forte," said John.

"Shut up, then." Urgent kisses. And without the ability to keep talking, John had to concentrate on the physical reality of his world. Sherlock's hand, his fingers, curled around John's shaft, that was unbelievable, it was nothing like he had imagined.

When he'd imagined it, he'd been masturbating, and so had experienced a tighter grip. What Sherlock was doing to him must surely be what he himself liked. What he had done in the shower. He must be very sensitive.

The thought surged up in him like steam and it escaped his teeth in a frustrated breath. "Tighter. Please."

"Show me," and John sent his hand down to reinforce Sherlock's, fingers overlapping.

That was better. That was all fine. And then Sherlock murmured, his breath mingling with John's, "Today I did happen to be thinking about you."

John made an incoherent sound, a ridiculous squawk halfway between excitement and dismay, because he was suddenly throbbing and coming. In his pyjamas. Over both of their hands.

 _"That's good, my John,"_ and just the sound of that wrenched a fresh pulse out of him. _God!_

Sherlock, refusing to go downstairs, put John's shower towel to use cleaning them up over John's protests. (There weren't any more clean towels.) John could hear Feren's tail thump the floor when Sherlock passed near her in the dark.

Sherlock lay down again beside him. "I enjoyed that," he said. "Any problem?"

Sleepy now, John found it increasingly difficult to argue. Sherlock had been in charge of the entire encounter, had he not?

"I enjoyed it too," he sighed, turning instinctively toward Sherlock, though Sherlock did not entangle himself in John's arms. "It's not a problem as long as you enjoy it."

"Go to sleep," Sherlock said.


	9. Stop

When John finally woke, late the next morning, Sherlock had gone.

He might not even have panicked for quite some time, thinking this a normal sort of absence. But this time, Sherlock left a note. And Sherlock never left a note.

_V. has observed that you sleep soundly after such activities._

_I am going to deal with this problem. I know where it came from, and V. and I are uniquely suited to stop it._

_We do not want the heart, as they say, burned out of us. Stay safe._

_SH &V_

John sat down and put his head in his hands. Ferendala leaned against him and tried to lick his face through the gaps in his fingers.

"Call Mycroft," she said, when she could get John to look up.

Of course. Of course, yes. John found his phone.

Sherlock did not make it easy to trace his movements, even for Mycroft. At least twice, Mycroft said, baffling changes of plan necessitated reworking the whole invisible structure seeking to close in around Sherlock like a net.

John insisted that Sherlock's target was Moriarty. He pointed to the line in Sherlock's note, _We do not want the heart, as they say, burned out of us,_ though having to show that to anyone embarrassed him; it made direct reference to Moriarty's words. Why Sherlock was going without John.

Just when they had tracked Sherlock down in Vienna, he disappeared. But in a different way. Unless he were staging an elaborate stunt, and neither John nor Mycroft could imagine the stunt which involved Sherlock abandoning his favourite clothes, his toothbrush… his _phone_ in the hotel room.

That wasn't Sherlock.

And so another layer of Mycroft's people had silently snapped into formation around them in the effort to locate Sherlock Holmes.

"He went into this alone because he thinks he is immune," Mycroft said.

"He is immune."

"To cold Dust, perhaps," said Mycroft. "Until such time as his dæmon should settle."

The word _again_ hung unspoken between them over the phone line.

Wait. "Do you think he's in danger of…?"

"One moment," said Mycroft, "I am receiving a report."

John waited. Then Mycroft said,

"Does the name 'Arthur Clay' mean anything to you?"

There was a silence, and then John said very carefully and very quietly, "Cousin Awful?"

"So Vyarosse told you that."

"No. Sherlock did."

Mycroft's silence went on for several seconds, then he said sharply, "Hyryne would like to speak with Ferendala."

Ferendala was excited. She had never had a phone call before. And apparently dæmons could use their silent-to-humans language over the phone, because John never heard a word.

"You can take the phone back now," she said.

John put the phone to his ear, expecting Mycroft. Instead a breathy voice he'd heard once before said,

"Arthur was there in the room."

John did not answer. The reflexive "What?" caught in his throat. But he'd heard perfectly well.

"He was younger," breathed the serpent dæmon into the phone. "Too young for settling. He and his dæmon were in the corner of the room. We did not discover this until later. There were too many other factors."

Factors. Like a dead body. Just how had Mycroft killed her? John never did ask.

"He wasn't the sort to sneak out of bed on his own," said Hyryne. "He was frightened of everything. Their rooms were on the other side of the house. It is likely she brought him in with her."

"And what happened to him? After?"

"Unknown. Mummy intervened. Presumably he was sent to his mother's family."

"Oh, that's good," John snapped. "Why not? They'd done such a great job with _her_."

Mycroft lifted the phone to his ear.

"Beatrice's family had, under the deep cover of respectability of course, considerable financial interest in several very expensive brothels. The adult Arthur Clay would seem to have ended up in possession of same. He is not, however, noted for his competence. He has lost staggering amounts of money, and he has alienated many of his connections.

"I am now informed that he contacted James Moriarty in his capacity as consulting criminal, and asked for a better means to control his 'empire of flesh'. His words."

Ugh.

"Some of his people are in Vienna, but the primary operation is in Dubai. He - "

"Is that where Sherlock is, then?" John interrupted. His heart was pounding and his stomach sour with adrenaline. "Dubai?"

"I don't think so," Mycroft said, with emphasis on the 'I'. "Arthur takes after his mother in his habits, if not his interests. Possibly this was intentional on her part. He has been continuing her activities."

Oh God. Oh fucking God.

"Such people exist in all walks of life," said Mycroft, "but those who are very rich have a tendency to congregate. We've traced his money to several villages in Switzerland. In one of these, a large house has been suddenly reopened despite having stood empty for a year and a half."

"Ah," said John. He was already moving towards the door, jaw set in a grim line, his left shoulder radiating pain. Ferendala looked fierce if you only looked at her face and neck, but her tail was down.

"There is a plane waiting for you," Mycroft said, and John hung up without even thanking him. Mycroft could have told him all of this sooner _and_ faster, damn him.

That hour on the aeroplane between Vienna and Zurich was the longest hour of John's life. It was longer than the hour he lay bleeding under the night sky in Zoroastria. It was longer than the hour he spent wrapped in Semtex and sweating in that stupid coat with Moriarty pawing at John's dæmon.

It was an hour in hell. His own imagination was making him sick. Feren whined and chewed at her own paws, a sign of extreme stress he had only seen from her perhaps twice in their lives.

There was supposed to be someone to meet him at the other end, an operative in some way belonging to Mycroft. First he and Feren had to get on a train, because apparently pervert enclaves were located well outside the environs of Zurich itself. It was a picturesque trip and it took fucking forever.

"Dr Watson," said the woman on the platform. She was beautiful, small and slim, dark hair, she looked and smelled expensive and was swathed in white fur, and her dæmon was a black cougar or panther, John wasn't sure which, big and sleek and powerful. "Mr Holmes has called a favour in. Rather a large favour, but it's his to call in, I suppose. I'm here to help you. My name is Irene. Irene Adler. This is Baltia."

Feren moved her tail once, cautiously, promptingly. John cleared his throat. "This is Ferendala." It clearly wasn't necessary to introduce himself.

The dog and the panther, who were almost exactly the same size, nodded to one another. John was not generally attracted to women with predator dæmons. The panther's obviously feminine name, however, was an interesting detail, and the obvious intelligence in her chatoyant golden eyes was almost as keen as Vyarosse's.

_Vyarosse. Sherlock._

"Can we get going," John said tightly. "I take it you know where they are. What's the security like? How do we get in?"

"Through the front door," Irene said as they got into her car (sleek, black, windows darkly tinted). A young blonde woman was sitting at the wheel, and she pulled the car away onto the snowy road the moment they were inside.

"Meaning…?" said John, after a lingering glance at the driver, wondering if she was to be trusted. He couldn't see her dæmon from where he was sitting, it must be something small.

_Vyarosse. Sherlock!_

"Meaning, I have been invited. Not socially, mind you. My professional services have been engaged by Mr Clay."

"What are you, a… decorator? Artist?" he tried to guess. The girl driving the car failed to hide her smile. Irene pretended not to see it.

"A kind of an artist, yes. I am a dominatrix."

That was possibly the last thing he had been expecting to hear. "A - o...kay. A dominatrix. Right. What has he - Has he hired you before?"

"No," a little coldly, perhaps at the sputtering, perhaps at the word 'hired'. "But he asked for the _best_."

"You - you do understand what this is all about? Mycroft has briefed you?"

"Yes, I understand what this is all about," said Irene Adler, and now she did look at the girl driving the car.

"We need to find Sherlock the moment we're inside," said John. "I don't know how long he's been in this bastard's hands. I don't know what he might have done."

"Yes." Just that, maddening.

"Well how do I come in with you? I can't exactly walk in with you two, can I?" Anyone who had looked up Sherlock Holmes on the internet would know what John Watson and his dæmon looked like.

"You _could_ , if we played it right, but no need. Thought you'd like to take a little stroll around the perimeter. He's got four men, but only one in the house at a time. They rotate out. We can handle the one inside, especially if he's just come in from outside."

"Distracted," said Kate, so John heard her soft voice for the first time. "Runny nose, foggy glasses, that sort of thing."

"But if for some reason we can't, I'm sure you won't mind taking care of all four, will you now?"

"I haven't got a gun," said John. Mycroft could do a lot of things, but even he could not get John onto last moment flights with his not-what-you-could-call-legal firearm. Not without more warning than he'd had. Which was none.

"You have now," said Irene, and handed him a very nice, sleek little Walther PPK.

He was used to a bigger gun, but there was no doubt this was a better fit to his hand. And it was just the thing. It was as cold and hard and ready to kill as he was. And the suppressor would be useful.

"Thanks."

There was no need to try to conceal the car, to sneak onto the premises. The sleek black Mercedes was like the Trojan horse. All they had to do was stop for a moment and let John change places with Kate behind the wheel. Now he was the 'chauffeur' for Irene and her 'assistant'. He saw Kate's dæmon when they made the change. It was a luna moth, clinging to her scarf, almost completely blending in to the dappled brown weave.

John drove the remaining mile in silence. The woods were very dark. Irene told him where to turn, another long drive through tall trees.

One of the men outside let them in by a gate. Old stone, fortified some time back with iron. The man looked miserably cold. Then a further drive, up a hill, with trees no less thick.

The house was only partially lit. John let the women out to go to the door, pulled the car round the side and shut it off. He waited one minute to let his eyes grow accustomed. Then he and Feren went out hunting in the dark. There was snow, but it was old snow, here and there in patches. There was nothing to crunch on the ground and give them away.

He let two of them pass near without doing anything. Once the pattern was clear, and one of them traded places with the man inside, John sprang into silent action.

The man who had just come outside had not let his vision acclimate first. He was easy. He didn't need the gun. It was so quiet that the sound of the dæmon - a little dog - imploding was like a scream in John's ears. Feren bared her teeth and showed none of her usual sorrow. Not now. Not here.

Better to go out under a clean sky, he thought, than trapped in liquid nitrogen. Souls dissolved in frozen hell. Used to make slaves. John had needed to kill someone over this ever since he heard about it. Sherlock's peril only made it an imperative.

The other two noticed something had happened and converged, but neither of them thought to signal inside first. John enjoyed this particular sortie rather a lot. It felt good to act. It felt good to kill, sometimes. For Sherlock it did.

_Sherlock._

The two women had not taken care of the man inside as they had said they could. Timing, probably. The man had been in long enough that he was not distracted by runny nose or foggy glasses (which he didn't wear). His joints were much less chilled than those of the men outside. The men weren't rotated often enough. No chance for them to fix it now. John still took him down with quiet ferocity, and the man's eagle dæmon, which had sprung at Ferendala, went up in Dust.

The both of them looked slowly from the body on the floor next to the staircase, then at one another.

"I smell something," said Feren. Something apart from gunpowder and blood and Dust, she meant.

"Me, too," said John.

Thick and sickly sweet, like incense.

It was opium.

Gun in his hand, heart teetering on the edge of a well, John went up the stairs, with his dæmon stalking silently beside him. In his mind's eye he was surrounded by the tall red flowers of Zoroastria, rippling in the wind as far as the eye could discern.

The big heavy door at the end of the corridor stood open. The owner of the house felt he'd nothing to hide, then. Or perhaps it was ventilation for all the opium smoke, the scent of which was so thick now it ought to have had a colour. John moved silently, closer and closer, till he could see, but already he could hear.

" - really a bit excessive," Irene was drawling, in a tone so posh it would have made Mycroft sound positively plebeian - she hadn't sounded like that when talking to John or to Kate. "If you sedate him into unconsciousness, he can hardly benefit from anything I can do."

At this point John reached an angle where he could see something.

There was only a slice of the room available for view. But what he could see of it told John why Clay had brought Sherlock here, and didn't just keep him in Vienna or take him to Dubai. This was a private playroom. Richly appointed, yet somehow - childish.

The stench of the opium was overwhelming now and John had to fight not to cough. He pulled his sleeve up to his mouth and fought to breathe normally, quietly, not to give in to the urge, the need to cough this sweet awful smoke out of his lungs.

John could not see Sherlock. He couldn't see Irene either - presumably she was near Sherlock, looking at him while she talked. John could see Kate, and he could finally see the man he had come to kill, Arthur Clay.

He didn't look like much. He wasn't what you'd ever think of as a monstrous villain just from the looks of him. Even Moriarty, who had been clever enough to disguise his nature at first as he gathered data from poor Molly, had shown it at last, his mad eyes, his sudden screams, his twitching dæmon.

But 'Cousin Awful' looked so _ordinary_. Like a client, perhaps. But then, he had been a client - of Moriarty's. Brown hair, brown eyes, bland face, as ordinary and everyday as a duck on a lake in a park. Younger than Sherlock by a handful of years at most. But he dressed older, a lot older, almost a parody of the tweedy, landed gentleman. He gave the impression of a teenager sullenly dressed up in his father's clothes.

The man was holding something in his arms, presumably his dæmon. But at first John could not make out what it was. Bigger than cat-Vyarosse. Smaller than Ferendala.

John could not see Sherlock, and he _needed_ to see Sherlock. He moved right into the doorway, slipped inside. Irene had to have seen him, but she gave no sign.

She had shed her white fur coat and was wearing an even whiter dress, impeccably cut to her figure. Her panther dæmon sat as still beside her as though she were carved from onyx.

John's eye darted to find Sherlock. The bed, of course, but if John had been expecting to find Sherlock staked out naked or anything of the sort, he was at first relieved, then puzzled, then horrified.

There was a mosquito net or something like it over the bed. John could not at first make sense of such a thing. A mosquito net. In _Switzerland?_ Could there be some kind of fetish - ?

Sherlock lay inside it, fully clothed, with his hands bound behind his back. Vyarosse lay on his side beside him. It was hard to see inside the netting -

Ferendala went rigid beside him.

Then John understood that most of the smoke in the room was trapped under that net. Some of it escaped - tendrils of it wafted into his face, and he tried not to breathe it in, but too late. He fought off the sweeping feeling of enclosure, fought nausea trying to understand what it was like for Sherlock under that, breathing it in.

Sherlock could _overdose_ like that. He might have done already. There was no more time to waste. John lifted the gun and shot through the netting, tearing it open so that the smoke flowed out over everything. The censer-like device which was attached to it hit the wall in a shower of sparks and lay smoldering on the carpet.

There was shouting - that must be Clay. His voice was thin and he was coughing. He was calling for his men, but John knew that none of them would be answering.

"There's a fan," coughed Irene. "Try the switch by the door," and John had no choice but to step back and find it, he could not breathe. His head swam and he staggered. The blades of a ceiling fan, impossibly high up, began to stir into sluggish motion. So goddamned slow...

"Sherlock!" he shouted, when he could, but then harsh coughs seized him so that he wouldn't have known it if Sherlock had answered him. He doubled over, agonised. Oxygen. Clean oxygen. It was not to be had.

 _Feren_ , he thought, and she ran forward to see and help Sherlock. And then John's addled senses caught up and reminded him, Enemy in the room.

Two realisations happened to John at the same time. First, that his dæmon was licking Sherlock's face - in worry, in tenderness.

Second, that Arthur Clay had Irene's woman Kate by the throat, with a gun to her head. Her feet didn't quite reach the floor. That detail, of her little feet in their little shoes, dancing an inch above the rare carpet, rattled around his head before John understood how impaired he must be.

Irene's eyes looked like dark holes in her head. Opium had the effect of constricting the pupils rather than dilating them as many other drugs did, but she had very dark eyes. She and her dæmon were frozen at the sight of Kate. John didn't know how the man had got her, but it didn't matter now.

He took a lurching step towards Sherlock, who was moving, if feebly, as Feren continued to lick his face. At least Sherlock could do that much. At least he wasn't in a coma like Anderson.

" _Stop_." Clay's thin wavering voice ought not to have carried any authority, but it did now. A hostage could do that.

"You're Watson," said the man threatening Kate. And now John could see what his dæmon was - no longer cradled in arms, it crouched in a chair nearby. It was a large, scaly, low-slung lizard, perhaps a goanna. It looked nervous in a way that made anyone who saw it feel nervous themselves. Furtive. As though it might dart at you and try to climb up your leg. No sane person's dæmon would do such a thing, but John had to assume this was not a sane person's dæmon. It did not cower even when he was looking at it.

"Arthur Clay? You're a dead man," said John, who felt empowered to make wisecracks since he was still holding a gun himself. "Why not kiss your ugly-arse dæmon goodbye right now."

The goanna dæmon hissed, whether at the threat to her human half or in reply to the personal insult, John did not care. Meanwhile, Feren had turned her attentions from Sherlock to Vyarosse, nuzzling the barely conscious cat in the side. At least he still was a cat.

"Please don't," said Irene, and nobody could tell to whom she was talking, Clay or John or what - but everybody could tell at whom she was looking. Her Kate, who despite her peril and obvious pain, did not whimper, just looked steadily over her captor's arm at her mistress. Her moth dæmon fluttered around her head as though she were a candle. Irene's panther bared her teeth and looked as though she would attack the hissing goanna, but both halves of Irene were nearly overwhelmed by the smoke and they staggered against one another.

"John," said Vyarosse from the bed, but his voice was slow and thick.

"Kind of in the middle of something here," John said tightly.

"I could say the same," said Clay. "You had no right to interfere."

"No right - !" John's hand tightened just a little on the grip of the gun. "Yes I did. You had no right to bring him here! You have no right to even look at him. You and your murdering Dust and, and your _mother_ \- "

At the sudden, convulsive motion of his hands, Kate did whimper involuntarily. The moth floated down to rest on her hair as though it couldn't flap its wings anymore.

"Let her breathe," shouted Irene in an incredibly commanding tone - this must be the voice of her trade, he thought in a splintered, inconsequential moment aside. Her dæmon's eyes appeared to be glowing. The fan blades above dragged through the smoke in slow motion, and the room seemed to swirl around John. The only thing that felt real was the gun in his hand.

Clay did loosen his grip slightly, Kate's gasp and coughing were obvious. He held her almost negligently now as he spoke to John. "Don't even speak of my mother! She was a _saint!"_

"She was a fucking pervert, and so are you!" Pervert was so inadequate a word to the purpose. But he wasn't exactly at his best.

"Shut up! She gave her life trying to help that _freak_ grow up like a normal person, and I'll see it gets done. Moriarty said he would _help_ me see it get done! Sherlock was way past old enough the first time! It _isn't fair!_ Dæmons are supposed to settle! If you don't like what they settle as, _that's too bad!_ No one gets to _choose!"_

The goanna flinched, then hung her head. John was a doctor of the body, not the mind, but he had seen enough people who hated their dæmons, they were prone to all sorts of illnesses and various flavours of self harm. It was always painful to see.

" _John_ ," again, and this time he couldn't tell whether Sherlock or Vyarosse was speaking. The room was finally clearing, but John felt even less stable now, disorientated. Feren was whining. The high pitched sound dragged down John's back like ragged fingernails.

Then Sherlock - or was it Vyarosse? - said something that took John an infinitely slowed-down second to understand. _Geneva cameos?_ What kind of impaired nonsense was -

**OH.**

John hit the floor just as something huge and white and terribly fast cannonballed over his head into the face of Arthur Clay, wings spread like an angel's, but biting and hissing like the devil. Clay screamed and dropped the gun, dropped the girl, and curled up on the floor, trying to protect his eyes.

Vyarosse. Had become a swan.

John scrambled to his feet. His own scant height felt a million miles high, as though his legs were stilts. He saw Kate push the dropped gun with her foot so that it slid across the floor. He saw Irene Adler pick up the gun and point it at Clay's head. Clay's dæmon was writhing on the floor in a panic, shrieking thinly, trying to get as far as possible from the swan.  The panther snarled, advancing on the goanna, but the tip of the lizard's tail slashed around like an uncontrolled whip.

"Wait," John shouted, lunging, his own borrowed gun went flying, and for the first time John put his hands on Sherlock's dæmon, pulling the big, tightly muscled, densely feathered beast back and away from the face it was so relentlessly attacking. Ferendala was behind John. He tripped over her. They fell backwards. John went down on his back with swan-Vyarosse on top of him, and the breath was thoroughly and completely knocked from his lungs. Ferendala was on her back, legs kicking feebly in the air, incapacitated just as her human half was. But Vyarosse was clear.

Irene shot. No suppressor on that gun; it barked as loudly as Ferendala could. The sound was all John knew for a moment as he struggled for breath, struggled to refill his lungs. He opened his eyes in time to see the wretched goanna dæmon go up in Dust, beautiful at last.


	10. That's Not What You Do

None of them were quite normal for several hours. Mycroft was sending a cleanup team. The lingering effects of the smoke made both Kate and Sherlock violently ill, and John fought his own gorge at the sound of their retching. Irene was with Kate, holding her hair back, speaking soothingly.

Sherlock was sitting up now, leaning against the headboard of the bed, looking at John. John remembered that his hands were bound and staggered to his feet to do something about that.

Vyarosse was still a swan, and John looked worriedly from him to Sherlock without saying a word. Dear God, had he _settled_ like that? Nothing had _happened_ yet, had it? Irene had not had time to do anything she was supposedly there to do.

"It's hard to change," said the dæmon, a bit slowly and exaggeratedly, like an inexperienced drunk trying to sound sober. "Like this. I have to… work up to it."

Slowly and with obvious effort, Vyarosse put his head down and changed into the familiar form of the Abyssinian cat. The transition, usually so quick, dragged on like cinematic slow motion. John darted a glance to Sherlock's face and saw his gaze turned inward.

The cat looked up at John and said clearly, "He told you swans were bad, did he not? For him. But not for me."

_Who is 'he'? Who is talking?_

John stared into the eyes, which were the same impossible, northern-lights colour in both dæmon and human. Because Sherlock was the same gender as his dæmon, the pronoun was ambiguous. But it had been Vyarosse who told John about the swan. And it was Vyarosse's experience with the swan that had been traumatic, not Sherlock's.

He thought about it. His mind was still moving slowly. The brilliant man. The changeable dæmon. Settling. Deleting. Unsettling. Adapting. Sherlock did not use Vyarosse as a puppet. Sherlock _shared_ with Vyarosse. Changed places with Vyarosse. Another goddamned impossible thing. Why not?

"What about the opium?"

"Drugs are drugs," said Sherlock, or was it Vyarosse?

Did it matter?

***

They went home.

Sherlock and Vyarosse slept for almost an entire day. When they woke, and John asked about Moriarty, Sherlock said,

"I don't believe Moriarty intended to create cold Dust. I believe he discovered it by accident."

"By accident. Torturing dæmons," John said, as Ferendala leaned against him.

"Yes," said Vyarosse. He sounded clinical about it, but Sherlock's hand was on his back. "For fun, or for profit, or simply because he is mad. But then there it was - cold Dust - and he would not have known to protect his dæmon."

"His dæmon is addicted," said John, finally catching the point, and seeing again in his mind's eye the twitchy fox dæmon with the slightly bulging eyes.

"Yes," said Sherlock. "And so he needed to continue producing it. For his own dæmon. And then along came Cousin Awful, looking for something better than opium with which to control his slaves. And while he was at it, perhaps Cousin Awful revealed his history with me.

"Moriarty believes that he and I are alike."

"You're _not_ ," snapped John, instantly on the defensive. _Torturing dæmons. For fun or for profit._

"No, we're not. I know what you're thinking, but focus, John. The one way in which we are different - that matters to _him_ \- is that unlike his, my dæmon is immune to cold Dust. He helped Arthur get me in the hopes of making us even."

"And now he's in hiding," said John.

"Oh yes, I should think so. But he'll resurface. Sooner or later he must. And Mycroft's people will be watching for him everywhere."

"A million eyes and a thousand hands," said John, and Sherlock laughed.

"That's not a bad line. Mycroft would hate it. You should use it in your blog."

***

Moriarty had been the source of the idea of the cold Dust, and you could not kill an idea, but the special equipment needed narrowed down the places which  could possibly manufacture it. And the idea itself was so monstrous that even hardened men, like the man in the lab, would kill themselves rather than continue. Moriarty himself continued to evade all of Mycroft's eyes. Out of sight, but not out of mind, never for a moment. Not now.

There were going to be terrible withdrawals as the supply dried up. When John thought about the suffering of those already victimised, Feren lay down where she was and cried, quietly, in the way that dogs can, while he looked everywhere else in embarrassment. Anderson, also a victim, was at least in a line of work where danger was something he had presumably accepted. The young women and men being trafficked were innocents. The dæmons murdered, even more so.

On Baker Street, life seemed to go back to normal. Except that Sherlock mentioned one evening as John was going to bed, almost offhandedly, that John may as well sleep 'down here', meaning in Sherlock's room. When John stared at him, Sherlock went on, as though it were new data, "The bed is bigger."

So instead of going upstairs, John and Feren went into the room with the periodic table on the wall and the much bigger bed and all of Sherlock's clothes ruthlessly arranged in the closet, and he sat down on the bed and looked at his dæmon as she looked at him.

"I don't want them to settle," she said.

"I know." He didn't either. The cat form was familiar, but it was not complete - he could not embody Sherlock's spirit all by himself, not without the ability to change. Sherlock was just - _special_. He was different, he was _more_. It seemed just as monstrous to John that he should settle in what was considered the normal way as to have it forced upon him. It just shouldn't _happen_. He shouldn't be limited.

No matter what.

He tried to stay awake so that Sherlock could not sneak up on him this time, but of course Sherlock waited him out and the next thing John knew, he was the front spoon in a pair of spoons, and the rear spoon was nibbling his neck in a way that didn't analogise to silverware at all.

"Sherlock," John murmured, and as though waiting for this sign that John was awake, Sherlock fitted his hips up snugly against John. They were both clad in pyjamas, of course, but there was no mistaking the hard length meaningfully rocking against his arse.

Not asexual, then. John wasn't sure now why he ever thought that. He'd just been flailing around, trying to understand. But he'd been wrong.

Sherlock's body heat seemed to burn right through the fabric. It ought to have caused John a gut-deep panic, he thought, another man rutting up against him - but he had been sharing a bed with Sherlock for _months_ and he felt surging, grateful desire - with fear following belatedly in its wake. John wished he could see Vyarosse but could not find him in the darkness.

"It's all right," Sherlock said in his ear, and the hand on John's hip slid forward, palming John's cock through the cloth where it was already growing damp.

"How??" _How can it be all right?_ he was trying to say, but Sherlock was rubbing him and rubbing against him and breathing hot and shallow against John's neck and he couldn't get any more sensible words out.

"We love you," whispered Vyarosse in the darkness, very near. "We desire you. It's all right if we settle."

John felt tears in his eyes. Feren said, also quite close, "We love you too. But we don't want to make you _less_."

"That's not what you do," said Sherlock, his beautiful voice halting, hoarse. And then his teeth pricked the back of John's neck in a way that John had never known before that he liked. He gasped. He reached down, put his hand over Sherlock's - not to stop him, but it was the only part of Sherlock he could easily reach with his hand. He rocked back into Sherlock now, finding the complement to an admittedly ragged rhythm. The low moans so close to his ear made John almost wild.

"Please," he groaned, "oh god please. Sherlock."

Please come, he meant. Please find pleasure in this sacrifice. Please think it was worth it, after.

"Johnn," Sherlock writhed against him, losing coherent rhythm, and John arched and bucked back against him and gasped, "Yes."

The sounds Sherlock made, the way he struggled and surrendered and his hand on John lost all sense of what it was supposed to be doing… John revelled in these, drank them in, wondered what Sherlock's face looked like in rapture, knew that he would discover this in the future, this and more. He could already feel the throbbing and spreading heat against him as he passed the point of no return and, muffled in his pyjamas, came against their joined hands.

In the morning, John opened his eyes reluctantly, almost fearfully. What would he see? Sherlock slept against him, breathing deeply. John wasn't sure what had awakened him until it happened again: Sherlock's mobile on the night stand, vibrating? No, it had made the normal sound. The vibration was from Vyarosse, who had shoved himself between John's pillow and the headboard, and he was purring.

So: he was a cat. That... was not so bad a thing. The form was beloved, familiar - explanations would not be needed for those who hadn't known in the first place. They wouldn't know anything had happened.

Feren lifted her head and looked at him. She was at the foot of the bed - there was room enough for her down by John's feet. She had a droll, relaxed look on her face. So obvious just from looking at her that last night had been good. It should have been embarrassing.

But there were other things on his mind. What would Sherlock say when he woke up? Would he think it was worth it? Would he resent Vyarosse's being confined in one form - would he think Moriarty had got his wish?

The phone chimed again. Sherlock shifted and frowned into the pillow. The tone of the purring changed, and Vyarosse yawned.

"Will you see what that is," Sherlock muttered. John thought Sherlock was talking to him, but before he could push up onto his elbow, Vyarosse stood up, stretched luxuriously, and _flew into the air_ as a little bird. Tawny brown. Blue eyed. The bird landed on the phone, pecked at buttons with his little beak. Tilted his head this way and that as he gazed at the screen.

John stared.

Vyarosse looked up at him.

"Good news."

And then, changing back into the familiar cat, he jumped back on to the bed and nuzzled John's face. Purring.

"That was Lestrade," said Vyarosse. "Anderson's come out of the coma."

***

John Watson no longer felt that he knew the end of his own story. And that was a liberating feeling. It wasn't just his story anymore, for one thing. He was also part of Sherlock's story, and that was the best story he knew.

For a long time, he and Feren both worried about Vyarosse settling. With each new activity Sherlock enthusiastically proposed in bed, John wondered, Will this be the thing that does it? Surely _this_.

But as time went by, and he began to relax, John started to think that if it had ever been going to happen, it would have happened on the night of that kiss, the night he went too far. Maybe it even _did_. Vyarosse did take that mouse form. But he didn't have to stay in it.

However they did it, they did it. If they were a law unto themselves, it would hardly be the first time.

All of their adventures were before them, the fascinating unknown. But one thing was absolutely certain. Moriarty was still free for now, but at the end of that story, John and Ferendala and Sherlock and Vyarosse would be there. Together.

Full stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, though intending to write a standalone story, I find myself with plenty of fuel at the end for a possible sequel. (See also my Neverwhere crossover [The Riddle](http://archiveofourown.org/works/839048?view_full_work=true).) A Riddle sequel is in the works. And I can safely say there will be more stories in this daemon AU, so I went ahead and gave it a series title. 
> 
> It is HDM canon for dæmons to have heartbeats. Isn't that weird? I don't understand it. But I included it.
> 
> Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone for the kudos and the comments. You make it all worth it. ♥

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Unsettled](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1178239) by [AxeMeAboutAxinomancy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AxeMeAboutAxinomancy/pseuds/AxeMeAboutAxinomancy)




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